


Trouble, My Old Friend

by Tepre



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A potion that make ye feel sexy, A! LOT! OF! BUTTONS!, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Desk fucking, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Dom/sub cream tones, Dom/sub overtones, Draco has a scar, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oh and Draco has a lot of buttons, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Inexperience, Sexy Potion, and talks really fast, because thIS IS HARRY AND HEY LET'S BE HONEST, because this is harry we're talking about and hey let's be honest, mention of trauma, ok now as for the sex:, slight obsessive behaviour, things happen ppl make bad choices and nothing is explained
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 20:53:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17988344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tepre/pseuds/Tepre
Summary: Harry goes rogue investigating an illegal potion and ends up at Draco Malfoy's dodgy lab.





	Trouble, My Old Friend

**Author's Note:**

> **Written for prompt #S93**  
>  **Kink:** Magical sex fantasies  
>  **One to three pairings (or 'any'):** Harry/Draco  
>  **Optional Prompt/Extras:** This product allows you to experience your deepest sexual fantasies. But they might not be exactly what you were expecting. I'd love the person to feel shocked and guilty about what they apparently desire (because they believed they were straight? Because they hate that person? Or because they really shouldn't be fantasising about their son's best friend?) and how much they enjoy the experience.  
>  **Submitted by:** birdsofshore
> 
> @birdsofshore: *babbles incoherently* It-- I-- *gestures* It's a thing. 
> 
> OK BUT NO, this prompt was wonderful and I fell in love with it from the second I saw it. Thank you for it! Everything that happened after I made the word doc is -- beyond me and I have 0 recollection of how any of this came to be. I'd apologise for it, but genuinely. 0 RECOLLECTION I HAVE NO IDEA 
> 
> **Important:** this is just a pile of smut wearing the semblance of a plot like it’s a fake nose and a hat. Don’t fall for it. There is, in fact, no plot. But there is smut. A whole pile of it.
> 
>  **My heart in a bowl goes out to:** Elle, who once woke up at ass-crack of dawn so we could start this journey together (not exactly how it happened but THIS IS MY STORY); Quicksilvermaid, Lettersbyelise, & RuArcher for cheerleading; Marina & Alle for always being in the right zone; and last but very not least: my beta, who held my hand while I cried and couldn't decide between buttons or laces: Hogwartsfirebolt. Yer a treasure. And, of course, to C.S. Pacat's Captive Prince universe, for making me fall in love with boys in brocade doublets (who have a mouth on 'm). 
> 
> **Just to be safe, I wanna warn beforehand:** this fic deals with the intersection of sexuality, trauma and control in the vaguest of terms, but it it deals with it nonetheless. C'est ca! 
> 
> ONWARDS, MY FRIENDS ✨
> 
> \--
> 
> The AMAZING [Lina](http://dwimmerlaiks.tumblr.com) has created some gorgeous fan art inspired by this fic, which can be found [here](http://dwimmerlaiks.tumblr.com/post/184178758004/draco-from-tepres-story-trouble-my-old).

They find the flyers during a standard patrol of Knockturn. 

They’re all over the place, on the walls and thrown across the cobbled road – yellow and bright, with crude illustrations dancing around the edges of the paper. It rained earlier in the evening and so most of them are soggy, falling apart under the footfall of passing wizards, witches, all darkly hooded under the grim London night.

“Classy,” is what Anthony says, trying to read one of the flyers that’s peeling off a wall – flipping it up with the tip of his wand. The paper, however, disintegrates almost immediately, does so with a sparkle and a whoosh of yellow dust. It gets carried on a gust of wind, gets stuck to everything, to Anthony’s hand and his robes and the glass of a nearby streetlight. 

“Ah fuck.” Anthony shows his hand to Harry, asks, “What the fuck is this?” 

Harry snorts as Anthony wipes off the yellow residue on his trousers. “Clever, I suppose,” Harry says, bends down to inspect one of the flyers on the ground. Along the margin, a tiny, naked little wizard is chasing a tiny, naked little witch. When they reach the corner of the paper, their dance switches, and then he’s the one to run away, she the one chasing him. The flyer boasts – in a curly, expansive font, thumping as though it were a beating a heart – access to one’s deepest fantasies. _Experience the forbidden!!!_ The first subscript exclaims. And then, in smaller letters, _Explore the deepest caverns of desire!!!_ , and in smaller letters still, _Anything you ever wanted!!!_ There’s three more lines under _that_ , but the letters are too shrunk to make out. 

Harry touches a thumb to the corner of the soggy paper and the thing turns into a square of dust in a near-instant _poof._

“Okay,” Harry says, smiles to himself. Nods. “Okay.” He looks around, thinks, gets back to his feet. It’s started to drizzle, the misty rain dancing around the orange light of the streetlight. “D’you have some paper for me, Tony?”

Anthony has a little notebook in the pocket of his lining. A pencil, too. Harry reads out loud the Floo coordinates off of one the flyers, careful not to touch it. The numbers are coded as little dots at the bottom of the paper. He has to pause, every now and then, as the illustrations run by, obscuring the writing. Anthony takes note, clicks his tongue, says, 

“Well. Ready to explore the deepest caverns of your desire, buddy?” 

Harry shakes his head, casts another last look down the alley. He _tsk’_ s, says, “Am I ever.” And again, emphatically, “Am I _ever._ ”

*

Anthony wants them to file for a fast-track investigation, to run it by Gawain and get the paperwork waivered – to just Firecall the coordinates and see what happens. Harry insists that that would be a surefire way to get their proxy blocked, the moment whoever mans the fireplace sees who’s calling. He says this while vaguely gesturing at his own face with a file, reminding Anthony that, _we know I can’t go undercover like this_. Anthony gets annoyed at that, because applying for a Polyjuice will take _weeks_ , and he wants to crack this open right _now._

“Put on a hat!” he offers, waving a hand like it’s obvious. “A fake nose! Come on!” 

Harry laughs, crumples a page from a notepad, throws it at Anthony’s head. He dodges, just about, and waits a good half hour before throwing it back – while Harry’s focused on reading a report. The paper bounces neatly off the back of his head. 

*

For all his initial excitement, Anthony is entirely distracted within a week when a case comes by that follows up on reports of wizard candy being sold to Muggles under the guise of party drugs. Gawain teams Anthony up with Ron, and Harry feigns regret, waves them out of the office with a grand, _No, no! You go! Leave me behind, go on._

Anthony mimics being torn, hand over his heart as he walks backwards out the door. “Hey!” is the last things he says, an afterthought. “Did you file for the ‘Juice? For the dodgy sex thing?” 

Harry _hmhm’s_ in affirmation, and Anthony finger-guns at him, excited. “Next week we get the go-ahead, I can feel it. You and me, buddy. Dodgy sex thing.” 

“Dodgy sex thing,” Harry agrees, pointing back at him.

That evening, Harry turns the potions cabinet in the back of the pantry inside out looking for the phial. Kreacher stands by the door, grumbling, collecting everything Harry tosses out – tries to put them back in the cabinet the next moment. Harry shoves him aside as gently as he can, tells him _please not now,_ and _please just give me a – Kreacher, would you give me a goddamn—!_

He finds what he looks for when an annoyed jolt of his magic makes all the bottles spill out into the pantry. A few shatter, a few skitter across the floor. A few bounce off the spare blanket that’s folded in a corner. The phial he needs ends up in a potato basket. It’s a small yellowish glass, with a label sporting an expiration date written in Hermione’s sure handwriting – indicating March, two years ago. 

Harry _tsk’_ s, palms the phial. Polyjuice potions don’t go off, he knows that much. Just get weaker, faster to wear off. 

It’s a terribly bad idea. He knows it’s a terribly bad idea. It was a terribly bad idea from the second it crossed his mind, and only got worse when at the end of that one day he folded the coordinates and tucked them in between the pages of his planner. When he took them out again by the light of the lamp in his study, stared at the piece of paper as though it was the thing that held the mystery – it, rather than the muddled confusion of his own reasoning. 

The phial he leaves on the coffee table by the fireplace, together with a glass of water and the folded coordinates. He has a silent dinner with Kreacher, both of them listening to the news on the Wireless. Then he spends a half hour doing crosswords, then showers, then changes into clean clothes, civilian clothes. 

Then he goes downstairs and kneels by the fireplace. 

He takes a sip of water, a sip of the Polyjuice, then another sip of water. He breathes through the shifting, the stretching of his skin. The creaking of his bones. He breathes, in, out. Folds his glasses into his breast pocket.

He takes a pinch of Floo powder from the bowl by the mantelpiece, throws it past the grate, and in a voice that isn’t his, rattles off the coordinates. 

*

Harry had only ever had one sexual fantasy and to even call it a fantasy was, by all means, a stretch. 

The thought first came to him the summer he turned fourteen. It was as good a summer as he could imagine having – warm and languid, the first summer he got to spend at the Burrow. He’d wake up most mornings and his body wasn’t locked in panic. He’d hear the sound of footsteps up the stairs and wasn’t filled with dread. He’d just lie there, calm, listening out for the voices of Percy and George arguing in the stairwell. The days were endless, his and Ron’s one-on-one Quidditch matches in the backyard were endless, and through it all he carried the knowledge of Sirius like a pendant to his chest, like an additional link in the safety net of people he called a family.

He had his first wet dream, that summer. He couldn’t remember what it was, but woke up with his sheets a mess and a deep embarrassment churning at the pit of his stomach. His first worry was as to how to hide it from Mrs Weasley. He ended up padding through the house in the dead of night to the linen cupboard on the second floor, stole some fresh sheets and re-did his mattress. The ruined sheets he balled up and hid under Ron’s bed, deciding he’d deal with it the next morning. Yet he’d forgotten about it until after lunch, at which point the sheets were gone – had been taken. He’d spent the rest of that day in a ball of hot shame, expecting a comment, at some point, or even a reprimand from Mrs Weasley – but none came. Not even a look, a glance. Nothing but a smile and the request to bring his dishes to the counter when he was finished with his tea. 

That day he’d made an executive decision to wank in the shower before going to bed in the hope of avoiding any further embarrassment. He didn’t do it often, didn’t like how it made his mind feel unguarded – like anyone could walk in. Like anything could slip out. So when he did, he did so with his eyes shut tight, focussing on nothing but blankness, nothing but the feeling of his own hand on himself – squashing down any unbidden shapes or voices that floated to the surface. 

The only fantasy that ever managed to slip through – that hooked its curious little edge into the softest part of Harry’s teen desire – was as abstract as they came. He was in the shower at the Burrow, his hand a tight and quick fist over his prick, blocking out the sounds of the Weasley’s household turning down for the night. In a murmur he listed every single broom the Nimbus Racing Broom Company had ever manufactured, over and over again, pushing himself to finish. He was close, his arm against the tiled wall, his face heated in the crook of his arm, the hot water crashing on his shoulders, and that’s when the thought came to him. _What if I can’t touch,_ was the whisper of a question. _What if I can’t touch myself._

That’s how he came: with a sob and a gasp to the hollow of his elbow. 

And that’s how he’d come since, the few times he’d bothered getting that far. There were a good few years, a solid block of time between sixteen and eighteen, that grief and terror dictated his waking hours and the only touch he could bear was Hermione’s soft hand on his cheek. Ginny’s tight hug, rivalled in strength only by her mother’s. Her kisses had been nice, warm, felt like pockets of safety in the chaos of the war, but the idea of anything more seemed strangely comical to him – pointless. 

And then, after the war – after the funerals, after the weeping, after the bouts of anger that passed through every single one of them at any given moment of a day – after that, well. The comedy of sex had morphed into something else. Something that made his skin crawl, made him want to run or draw his wand at the very thought of it, ready to cast a counter-curse. 

“You’re all right,” is what Ginny would tell him, holding him close under the sheet as he shook, was unable to stop shaking against her. He was sorry, he was so sorry, but he couldn’t, just couldn’t. Ginny’s fingers in his hair and she’d say, voice tight with emotion, “You’re all right, darling. You’re all right. Everything is all right.” 

After him and Ginny, he tried twice more: once with someone he was dating – a half American witch who was kind and funny and talked more than anyone he’d ever met – and once drunk and miserable at a Muggle bar, with a guy who had a wicked smile that tugged at Harry like a half-formed memory. Both times he’d stumbled away, pushing off hands, pushing away lips – heaving and sick and unsettled in his own body. 

Whatever it was that he wanted, he didn’t think he could find it in the body of another. Once every few months, however, slow and tired under the shower, he’d lean back against the tiled wall and list every broom he could think of. He’d stroke himself, eyes closed and head tilted up. He’d go at a mad pace – racing himself to the end – and then let that thought bloom, that magical twist of thought: _I can’t touch myself. I’m coming and I can’t touch myself. I’m hard and I need to come and I can’t—I need. I can’t—_

And he’d come, panting, feeling wrung out and sad. The steam would blur everything in the room and he’d let the world tilt in and out of focus as he caught his breath, wait for the ache in the pit of his stomach subside. 

*

The fireplace Harry steps out of seems to have been built into what was once a linen closet: a small recess in the wall, halfway down a very long and very narrow hallway. He stumbles out mid-step, rights himself, still somewhat disoriented when he’s addressed by a witch in a recess opposite the fireplace. This one has a desk wedged into it. There are slips of paper and receipts pasted on the plaster walls behind her, Forget-Me-Not Nubs lighting up over vaguely scribbled notes, and a large clock in the shape of a cat — its tail is the pendulum. Its eyes move from left to right with each _tick, tock._

The witch behind the desk greets him like she’s already bored with him, bored with the night, asks, “Who can I put you down for?” in a thick New York accent, pronouncing ‘for’ as ‘foar.’ 

Harry isn’t sure, stumbles over his answer, searches for clues around him – looking from the cat clock to one end of the hallway — then the other. There are doors. There are small benches with people sitting, waiting. Hunched in on themselves. The space is too small to stretch out their legs.

“Excuse me. Excuse me,” is how she calls Harry’s attention back to her, and again asks who to put him down for. Harry replies vaguely, playing into his apprehension, mentions a flyer, mentions a potion – something about, _um, I’m not sure, um—_

“You’re here for the Professor,” she finishes for him, unbothered, paging through a book — running her nail down a list. “Name?” 

Further down the hall a door opens. Someone is ushered in, someone else leaves, looking flushed and nervous. Harry gives her a name, a variation on the one he usually uses undercover, _Mark Smith,_ while the man who exited the room squeezes himself behind Harry to get to the fireplace. 

The witch can’t find a Mark Smith on her list, tells him this with an arched brow – still looking down at her book – and asks him if he has an appointment. He shrugs, blushes, and she sucks her teeth in response, mutters, “So he just shows up here, no appointment,” to herself. She turns in her chair, unsticks a paper from the wall behind her, shoves it onto a silver spike on the desk, scribbles a few comments in her book and doesn’t sound pleased in the least when she tells him he’s in luck, that they, “happen to have a cancellation”, and that the Professor will see him shortly. 

“To your right, sixth door on the left. Please take a seat, you’ll be called in when—” 

“—The? My — where do I—?” 

“ _To your right,_ Mr Smith, sixth door on the left. Have a seat. Thank you.” 

“I, uh, how long will—” 

“Thank you!” She’s done with him, waving him off with a gesture — the bangles around her wrist clinking. Harry stands there for a heartbeat longer, uncertain, then shuffles down the hallway, counting doors as he goes. There’s a wooden bench opposite the sixth. It’s a pitch black door with nothing adorning it other than a single lightbulb above the doorpost, mounted into the framing. 

Harry has been sitting there for a clammy-handed quarter of an hour — accompanied only by the sound of doors opening, closing, distant murmurs — when the bulb lights up with a soft chime. The lock on the door springs of its own accord and opens, a small inch of a movement. An invitation to enter. 

There’s the tight pressure of going through a Port-A-Door when he walks through, the pit-of-the-stomach feeling that always accompanies Portkey magic. He has half a mind to worry, half a mind to scan for new coordinates, but one foot in and he’s already called to close the door behind him, to not let the air in, that—

“--I can’t stand the stench of that place, good _Lord_ the least they can do is cast a quick Spruce-Me-Up. But do they? Surely not, why inconvenience themselves on behalf of . . . What are you gaping at? Very rude. Sit down, please, I’m not in the habit of straining my neck for the sake of conversation. Sit. Sit!” 

It’s a drawing room that’s been converted into a lab of sorts. Up against the wall there’s a long table with several potions under _stasis_ , their smoke curling and collecting under the dome of the spell. There’s dark wooden shelves with jars, with things moving in the jars, glowing. There’s a cabinet full of phials, several temperature charms sticking and clocking in the slight change in humidity – there’s a collection of magnifying glasses, a pull chain coming down from the ceiling, the strong smell of sterilisation spells. 

There’s a fireplace, two armchairs and a small drinks table. A liquor cabinet. The walls are a dark green, dotted with golden stars, and in the middle of the room – cutting the space in half – is a large desk. There’s neat and organised stacks of parchment, there’s a cat’s cradle clicking away, and there’s Draco Malfoy, too, quill scratching away even as he glances up, annoyed, as Harry dazedly sits down in the chair opposite. The scar on the side of his face folds his scowl into something that could – but shouldn’t – be mistaken for a smile. The edge of it disappears under the dip of his jaw and into the high-collared frills of his shirt. The rest of him is bound tight in a brocade doublet held closed with a long line of buttons. 

_The Professor._

He looks everything and nothing like Harry remembers him. He looks older, sharper. He still looks like he’s going to get Harry into trouble. 

Harry tries to recall when they’d last crossed paths– nine years ago? Ten? Malfoy hadn’t returned for 8th year. Last Harry had heard he’d joined his mother in a villa in the Provence. Last Harry had heard there had been a scandal with a French politician, some sanctions barring his entrance to Wizarding London, then another scandal – an Italian politician, that time. Married. Harry had stopped keeping track, right about then. It had been his second year in the field and he’d spent most of it trying to bust a ring of underground Vampire hunters. He’d cancelled his subscription on the _Prophet._

“Hi,” Harry says. He’s afraid any other word will show how out of breath he feels. How shaky. 

Malfoy’s gaze jumps to him, quick, then back to his parchment. “What did you say your name was?” 

“I didn’t.” Harry’s voice is low. He clears his throat. “Mark. I’m – Mark.” 

“Ah, yes.” Malfoy scratches the last few numbers onto the sheet, puts down his quill. Sprinkles powder over the ink. “Mark. A fine wizarding name. And tell me, Mark, and what is the specific reason you felt it necessary to come into my office in full Polyjuice?”

Unease trickles down Harry’s spine, stills him. “I’m not--” he starts, gives a trembling smile. “I’m not in Polyjuice, I’m just . . .” 

“You’re just?” 

“I’m – I’ve—”

“Right. Well.” Malfoy lifts the paper, blows the pounce powder off of it. “I see you’ve made no effort to flesh out a story and to be frank, Mark, it’s the end of the day, I’m tired, so let’s just walk through the conversation all at once. I argue that your clothes don’t fit, that you walk like your feet are too big, that you have glasses in your pocket even though you clearly don’t need them. You tell me they’re reading glasses, I tell you you speak like you have a few too many teeth, you come up with a story about the dentist, etcetera, etcetera. In the end, I’m right either way.” He rolls up his scroll, slides it into a cardboard tube,twists a cap onto it. “You’re in Polyjuice. Believe me, I’ve crawled along the bottom of the belly of the wizarding world for long enough to know lies when I’m fed them. No no,” he waves off Harry’s faltering response, the fold of his scar deepening. “You misunderstand. It’s not that I mind. I just need to know the flavour of lies I’m dealing with.” 

Harry’s heart is beating hard at the base of his throat. He swallows around it, and Malfoy registers this – asks, 

“Are you an Auror?” 

“No,” is Harry’s immediate response. 

“Hmm.”

“I – look. Okay, I am – I’m in Polyjuice. But it’s not like I’m, that I – I’m just some guy. I like to keep private, is all.” He lets out a shaky breath, reaches for the one element of the story he’s prepared – half-heartedly so, while finishing his dinner. “Me and my girlfriend have had trouble, lately, and she suggested – well. I saw the flyer, and I thought – well. You know. I promise I’m not anyone. Just private. I’m sure you know what that’s like, right? Wanting to keep—”

The jolt of legilimency is like a whiplash – like walking into a sucker punch, like having your head slammed into a wall. He’s fast but not fast enough, he hasn’t had to be for years – no one ligilimenses these days, not with the ministry cracking down on privacy laws, and Harry’s occlumency instincts take a hot second to kick in. He pulls Malfoy back out, redirects, gets stuck on a forefront memory from earlier that evening: doing a crossword puzzle, trying to figure out the 9th clue, down. Seven letters, starts with an A, ends with an N. In the memory he glances up at the kitchen, mumbling words to himself. Kreacher, on the other end of the table, sulks over his plate of mashed potatoes. 

Harry pushes. Malfoy’s locked out with a _pop_ , leaving behind a cloudy film that’s about to develop into a full-on headache. Harry shocks back into himself with a grunt and a breathy, _“Fuck,”_ saying, “Jesus,” saying, “You can’t just—!” 

“Harry James Potter,” Malfoy says. His voice has gone tight. Other than that, he seems unbothered: he’s sat the same as before, leaning back in his chair, loose-limbed and laced up. He rests his elbows on the chair’s arms, brings his hands together. Twines his fingers, adds, “As I live and breathe.”

Harry’s still out of breath. His heart is hammering at the side of his neck and his head is throbbing. He pushes a knuckle into one closed eye to try and ease the pain. _“Fuck,”_ he says again, emphatically.

“And to what do I owe this pleasure? Are you here to arrest me?” 

Harry blinks through the ache, calming himself – breathing through his nose. Malfoy raises one eyebrow at him, continues, “You can’t, I’ll have you know. You have no papers, and you’re clearly here in civilians, and there’s absolutely nothing incriminating in m--”

“I’m not here to arrest you, Malfoy. Merlin.” He scratches a shaky hand through his hair. “Though I could, for that trick you just pulled. D’you know how high the penalty is for legilimency these--” 

“I have a license. Why are you here.” It’s not said in question. It’s a command to answer.

Harry takes a breath, pauses on it – considers his words. He glances to the fireplace, the door. No windows. He says, “You’re under investigation.” 

“Oh. Fun. What for, if I may be so bold?” 

“Oh, I don’t know, perhaps the little potions you’ve been advertising all over Knockturn for the past--” 

“It’s a registered potion.” 

“Ah. He has a license, a registered potion. Ever so law-abiding, aren’t you, Malfoy?” 

Malfoy flares his nostrils. Pushes one thumb into the other over the arch of his laced fingers. His scar deepens along the line of his scowl. “Investigate all you want, old friend. You won’t find anything.”

Harry holds his gaze. The frill of Malfoy’s high collar brushes under his chin, but Harry can still see the flutter of a wild heartbeat at his pulse point. He notes the tremor at the corner of his mouth, the wide set of his pupils. Harry licks his dry lips, says, “The department is going to need a sample.” 

“Of course,” Malfoy says. He pushes his chair back, rises to his feet. The line of buttons of his doublet reaches further down than Harry had expected. As he walks to one of the lab’s phial-filled cabinets Harry thinks, distractedly, that Malfoy’s grown very tall. His hair is long, tucked neatly behind his ears. It looks soft. It looks like he takes inordinate care of it. 

“Have you your confiscation papers?” Malfoy asks him, putting one small phial on the table between them. It’s brown glass with a yellow label, written in the same lettering as the flyer had been. _Cupiditentia,_ it says, the word faintly glittering. Harry makes to take it and Malfoy, still standing, pushes it back out of reach. 

“Papers, Potter,” he repeats. Harry looks up at him from under a frown, knowing he is right. Knowing that he has no legal foot to stand on and demand Malfoy give him the potion. “Ah, shame,” Malfoy says, reading Harry’s reaction correctly. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to buy it. Just like all my other customers. You are, after all, just some guy. Just a simple guy. Are you not, Mark?”

Harry works his jaw. He feels the costume that is this muggle body begin to fade around the edges. The bones in his back are starting to click, to shift. He wants to leave before the Polyjuice wears off. For some reason he doesn’t want Malfoy to see him, doesn’t want to look at Malfoy dressed in his own skin. 

“That’ll be thirty Galleons,” Malfoy tells him, taking a Transfer-Coin station from one of his drawers – placing it before Harry. 

Harry smiles wryly, all pained irony and disapproval. But he’s already making for his own coin, lifting his hip to reach into his pocket, saying, “Merlin, what price d’you call that?” 

“A special-friend price,” Malfoy tells him. Harry holds his coin to Malfoy’s transfer station. They both glow – first gold, then blue. A soft chiming sound announces the transfer successful. 

“Excellent,” Malfoy says, and this time his scar does disappear into a smile. It’s nothing kind of humorous, however. It looks like danger, that smile, making the hairs stand on the back of Harry’s neck. The feeling trickles down his spine, a buzzing that Harry’s come to associate with the knowledge of oncoming trouble. Malfoy picks up the phial with long, long fingers. Deposits it in Harry’s palm. Closes Harry’s hand around it for him. 

“Enjoy,” he says, shark-smile spreading. A log cracks and snaps in the fireplace, and Malfoy’s sharp corner teeth gleaming in the light. _Trouble,_ Harry thinks, familiar as ever. 

*

It had been, in fact, ten years – not nine – since they’d last spoken. The memory came to Harry, unbidden, seconds before he’d slipped into a deep, Firewhiskey-laced sleep. It had been during the trials, toward the end of the circus – a cold day at the end of November. Harry had been called from school to testify, an entire day of a long and heart-breaking trial unpacking the war-heady days of Xenophilius Lovegood. The day had gone on for longer than scheduled, and it was well past dinner by the time Harry stumbled out of the courtroom, wrung-out and hungry. He’d begged off Arthur and Shacklebolt, claimed that he needed to clear his head. That he’d be fine, that he’d be sleeping at Grimmauld, would head back to Hogwarts in the morning. 

He’d been wandering the hallways of the Ministry for a good half hour, hollow – his mind empty of thoughts – when he glimpsed Malfoy. He was sat on a bench by the fountain on the third floor patio, the little cloister garden under an enchanted ceiling. Harry had sat there before. It was where Arthur usually took his lunch.

The ceiling had shown a clear night’s sky, a few stars winking in between the branches of a crabapple tree. The fountain babbled, quiet, into its basin. Malfoy sat, hunched in on himself, his elbows on his knees – head hung low between his shoulders. Harry had spoken for him early on in his trials, two months prior. They still hadn’t finished. 

Harry had silently joined him on the bench, that evening. Malfoy had noted him with a sideways glance, shoulders stiff. The cut on the side of his face hadn’t quite healed, at the time, was an angry pink line, skin around it shiny and taut. Harry had wanted to know how that’d happened, also didn’t want to know at all. 

Malfoy had been the first to speak. He’d asked, voice a little rough, whether Harry was due at Hogwarts the next day. Harry had _hmhmm’_ d, and Malfoy left a long pause before asking, sounding small, what school was like, these days. 

_Different,_ Harry had said. _A mess. The same. I don’t know._ He’d been tired, had stared – blurry – at the burbling of the water in the basin. He’d coughed a little laugh, humourless, said, _I can’t believe we made it out alive._

And Malfoy had answered: _What makes you think we made it out?_

Harry’s attention had shifted from the fountain to him, then. He stared at Malfoy with the same blurry fascination. The cut on his face seemed so tender, as though it could bleed if Malfoy scowled, or smiled, or spoke too animatedly. The rest of him was soft in a way Harry had never seen on Malfoy but had known, intimately, from watching his friends wake up weepy and disoriented in the mornings. The skin around his eyes was puffy, the potions he used on his hair had been worked out with nervous fingers, scratching through over and over. During the trials Harry had seen this habit Malfoy had developed. 

Unthinking, Harry had reached out, wanting to put his fingers to the spot where Malfoy’s cut dipped toward his jaw. Malfoy caught his wrist, seeker-fast. His eyes were dark on Harry. Weary. His grip was startling, a vice. His fingers had been cold and his palm warm and he was _strong._

Harry pulled back his hand, flushing. He remembered something, spoke to move past the moment, said, _Remember the time you broke my nose?_

_Yes, Malfoy had said. Remember the time when you—_

_Yes,_ Harry had said. His flush was still warm at the back of his neck. He could still feel the imprint of Malfoy’s fingers around his wrist, the harsh grip of them.

*

The phial burns hot in his pocket all through the following day. His focus is shot to pieces. He requests the papers necessary for a warrant, the papers he needs to gain access to the Potions and Patents database, the papers he’d need for a searching and confiscation, and even Ministry-regulated Polyjuice. 

He requests all of them, piles them up on his desk, and doesn’t fill out a single line. 

At around midday Anthony starts his shift, looking tired but otherwise cheerful, startling Harry every ten minutes or so with another part of the previous day’s raid he’d forgotten to mention. _Oh! And!_ it’d go, Anthony rolling his chair closer to Harry’s desk, _Ron slid over gravel and tore the whole right half of his robes,_ and did he tell him? Anthony himself had _dodged a triple jelly-legs, I swear, a triple!,_ had _jumped over two stacked crates before I tackled the wanker, you should’ve seen it, oh it was—_

Harry is distracted. He leaves for the bathroom, spends too long there, turning the phial over in his hand, rolling it between his fingers. He goes to the canteen, intending to get lunch but ending up pushing his food around while watching two very young junior Aurors engrossed in one another two tables over: one of her hands at the nape of his neck, him kissing her shoulder, her mouth, the tip of her nose. 

He stops by Dean down at the lab and asks him inane questions about ingredient registration and the tracking of patents. Dean has his potion goggles up on his head, and there’s a blue circle around his eyes marking their shape – he’d been leaning over a puffing blue potion when Harry came in. Dean answers kindly enough, changes the topic to their plans for Luna’s birthday the next week, and Harry leaves quickly after that. 

He leaves work altogether a half hour before the end of his shift, vaguely claiming illness, hand over his stomach. It’s a first, in all of his years at the DMLE. 

Malfoy had told him to read the instructions. Harry had given him a flat stare, had announced in simple terms that the sample was for the lab, not for Harry. _Naturally,_ had been Malfoy’s response, and showed him how to peel back the label to read the tiny script of instructions. 

Harry goes over them ten times, sitting in an armchair in his study, right by the fireplace – palms sweaty no matter how often he wipes them on the sides of his jeans. He’s turned up the wards. He’s set a glass of water by the drinks table. 

He’s scared. He’s not often scared, these days. It’s an unclear, murky kind of fear – and he’s not sure at what it’s aimed at, exactly. Whether it’s for what he’s done, about to do. The potion, where it came from. _Who_ it came from. For what he might see – _long-lasting visions!!!_ promised in tiny script at the bottom of the label – or for the potential he might not see anything, too. That he would be sat there, staring into nothingness, for all of thirty minutes.

Or that all he’d see would be himself, wanking in the shower aged fourteen, muttering names of brooms to himself. 

All options fill him with dread. 

He uncorks the phial. Rolls his tongue around in his mouth, heart high in his throat. Pauses. Then spits into the little glass bottle, waits as it fizzes, bubbles up to the lip. Settles down again. He swirls it, pours a small thimble-full into his glass of water, corks the phial back up. Takes the glass, watches the water turn a faint ochre. Swirls that, too. Takes a breath, feels the heat of the fire on his face, then downs his drink in a few long gulps. 

It doesn’t take too long to take effect. Not even a minute, perhaps, as Harry settles back into the creaky leather of the chair. He looks at the books on the shelving unit, most of them part of the Black family collection. There’s a few brightly coloured spines of paperbacks, gifts from Hermione. Harry forcibly relaxes. The edges of the room start to blur, his eyes drooping to a close. Panic paces in the back of his mind, a caged beast, but this magic is stronger and drags him under with a thundering strength – one second he is there, and the next he is gone. 

It’s like shifting through a pensieve, at first. Harry’s mind races through memories at a high speed: flashes of moments, small moments, a dinner during 3rd year, a time when he’d stumbled over something in a hallway, a joke Hermione had made once. The time Ginny did a whole skit imitating Filch. None of them is what the potion is looking for. It slows briefly on Harry’s first kiss with Cho, speeds up again. Slows on Ginny, braless in his bed, speeds up. Slows on the time he’d walked in on Neville in the showers. Speeds. 

Slows on the time on the train Malfoy had put him in a full body-bind, thrown the invisibility cloak over him. Broken his nose. Rewinds, plays it again. Rewinds, and the memory blurs, shifts, overlaps – Malfoy puts him in a body bind and then stares at him, eyes dark. Weary. He’s sixteen, eighteen, twenty-nine all at once.The memory rewinds again and this time Malfoy puts him in a body bind, leans down, hovers close – his breath ghosting over Harry’s cheek.

It’s there that the fantasy halts. In the vague logic of dreams there is no body bind at all, never has been, and all there is just Malfoy holding him down: Harry on his back on the ground, Malfoy straddling him, his grip a vice on Harry’s wrists. Fingers cold, palms warm. Harry struggles against it but Malfoy is a heavy weight on top of him, his hold strong. His hair is loose around his face, soft at his cheeks, no potions slicking it back and it falls in front of his eyes as he moves to keep Harry down. He laughs breathlessly, says, 

_Harry James Potter. As I live and breathe._

In the fantasy Harry stills. His body is thrumming with adrenaline, wanting to fight back, trying to gain back control. The illusion trills, blurs out to black for a fraction – wanting to shut down, wanting to halt the scene – but the potion is stronger. The scene comes back into sharp focus, and Malfoy is close. His smile all gleaming teeth, his nearness almost as good as real. Harry opens his mouth to speak, but Malfoy quickly moves to cover his mouth with a hot palm.

 _Don’t_ , he says, glancing over his shoulder – at the empty train outside the compartment. Watching out for something. He holds both of Harry’s wrists with one hand, and Harry could probably dislodge him now. _Stay still,_ this Malfoy says, this strange young thing, this clear-eyed danger. He doesn’t have his scar yet, in this fantasy. No lines edging the corner of his mouth. He asks, _Can you stay still for me?_

Harry breathes heavily through his nose. He can feel the gusts of it against Malfoy’s hand. He looks up in response, angry and confused. He can even feel the stretch in his arms, the way they’re pulled up over his head. He feels overheated. His skin too tight. 

_Good,_ Malfoy says, and moves his hand to Harry’s mouth. A fraction, a small gesture, and the next moment he has two fingers at Harry’s lips. _Good,_ he says again, and pushes in. 

There’s a beat where nothing happens. A beat where it’s the weight of Malfoy’s finger pads, almost real, pressing down on his tongue. A silence, Harry’s wild heart in his ears, humiliation burning hot down his spine. Humiliation and something else, the tight thrill of being held down, of not moving, of being told--

_Suck._

He does. Curls his tongue around Malfoy’s long fingers and sucks.

 _That’s right,_ Malfoy says, starts moving his fingers – in, out, pulled back by the suction of Harry’s mouth. Malfoy hums, appreciative, and Harry shudders, realises with an itch of a feeling that’s not quite familiar that he’s hard, very, very hard. His body reacts on instinct, he tries to rub up against Malfoy who’s sitting astride him, the heat of him so very close. The fantasy doesn’t quite feel like touch, however, the sensation too ghost-like, but Malfoy still huffs and pins him down harder, says, _Hold still, I said,_ and Harry goes still. His cock twitches, leaks. 

_Well done,_ Malfoy whispers, and the fantasy tumbles and accelerates at an overheated crescendo, following Harry’s own rising arousal: flashes of images, Malfoy grinding down on him as he makes Harry suck on his fingers; Malfoy letting go of his hold on Harry’s wrists to unbutton his own fly; Harry being told to not move, _not a single move;_ Harry being told to open his mouth, to _hold still,_ and Malfoy shuffling further up his chest, taking his cock out; Harry swallowing him down, the heat of it almost real, the smell of him almost there. Flashes of Malfoy fucking into his mouth, of Harry holding still, of Malfoy’s hands fisting his hair. Of Malfoy murmuring, _Good,_ and, _Yes,_ and, _So good for me._

Of Malfoy coming down his throat. Of Malfoy dragging his softening prick over Harry’s lips. Of Malfoy saying, _Do you want to touch yourself, Harry?_

And Harry nodding, cloudy and mad with need. Knowing he can’t move. Isn’t allowed to. 

_You can’t_ , Malfoy tells him, then, leaning down to whisper this – to the shell of his ear. _You can’t touch yourself,_ he adds, but reaches back, touch light on Harry’s stomach. _But I can,_ he says, brushes his knuckles to the shape of Harry’s cock in his trousers, to the damp spot over the fly. It’s like this that Harry comes– mouth open, soundless, the force of it roiling through him like nothing he’s ever known. 

When the world comes back into focus he’s in the study again. The room is hot, the fire still burning high. He’s an adult, he’s in his house, he has a strange sweet taste in his mouth and he’s come in his pants – his jeans are wet, uncomfortable against his skin. 

He’s shaky in his chair, putting a hand over the damp denim. Pulling it up, away from his leg. “Fucking hell,” he says, lets the denim go again. Leans back, digs his fingers into his eyes, under his glasses. “Fucking _hell,_ ” he repeats. Holds a breath for a long time, then releases.

*

The next day he barely makes it through the morning, and by midday falls asleep at his desk while Anthony is out for lunch.

He’d been up deep into the night, vaguely recalling reading 4 AM off the clock by the time he’d finally tumbled into a bleary and thin sleep. After having taken the potion he’d spent most of the evening pacing about the house, having half-formed conversations with himself. _Surely it’s—!_ he’d start, pouring himself a drink in the kitchen, then trail off. _I mean it has to—!_ halfway up the stairs, huffing an incredulous laugh to no one in particular. His body still thrumming with aftermath of the fantasy, loose and jittery all at once. There was a cottony fizz at the back of his mind, and at the forefront a suspicion, a far sharper emotion.

Malfoy must’ve tampered with the potion. That, or something had gone loopy, something about having accidentally connected the memory of Malfoy to the purpose of the potion, some unintended link made in his mind and clearly – clearly it must—

 _I mean there’s only one way,_ he told his wide-eyed mirror image, having scrubbed his face and brushed his teeth for the night. _Right? I mean there’s – how else would I—?_

He took the potion again before getting into bed: in one quick swig as he settled back against his pillows. Jaw set, hands fisted at his sides. It was quicker this time, flashing through his mind at lightning speed then settling, all at once, on a memory from 5th year: when Gryffindor and Slytherin had somehow reserved the pitch for practice at the same time, when they’d tossed a sickle for it, when Slytherin won. When Harry wouldn’t let it go and got into a tussle with Malfoy in the changing rooms. It was nothing, when it had happened: just a bit of a push, Ron holding him back, Malfoy getting pulled away from the fight as well. 

But in the murky waters of the potion, the memory shape-shifted and the rooms were empty save for the two of them. Harry was still angry, still pushed and looked for a fight, and Malfoy pushed back – pushed him right back against a wall. Pushed right up against him and held him as Harry struggled and grunted and rubbed their bodies together. Malfoy then leaned in even closer, said, 

_Stop. Hold still._

And Harry did. He was breathing heavily, felt hot and dizzy, felt out of control and frightened for it – thrilled for it. Malfoy pinned Harry’s wrists to the wall behind him, over his head. Put a little distance between them, glanced down. 

_Merlin,_ he’d said. _Look at you._

And Harry, hotly embarrassed at the tenting of his trousers, tried to struggle again. Malfoy was quick to grin, quick to add that—

_You misunderstand. It’s not that mind._

He brought Harry off by slotting a thigh between his legs and telling him to ride it. That’s right, he said, voice low, laced with amusement. _There you go. Almost there. Keep your hands up. Almost there, so close. Almost—_

When Harry came to, he’d already pushed his pyjama bottoms down to his thighs. Had come all over himself, still had one hand cupping his sensitive, half-hard cock. He groaned, bewildered, cleaned himself with a corner of a sheet – swallowing the off-sweet taste in his mouth. 

_Okay,_ he’d said, pushing himself up off the bed. And again, _Okay,_ sitting on the edge. _All right,_ he told himself, and proceeded to take the potion three more times in rather quick succession. 

He watched as a blurry version of himself sucked a young Malfoy off in a deserted potions classroom, fantasy-Harry’s hands fisted at his sides, having been instructed not to touch – not himself, not Malfoy, not anything but his mouth to Malfoy’s cock. He watched again as Malfoy jerked him off in a not-quite sharp reimagining of the 8th year’s shower room, Malfoy draped over his back, reaching around and saying, _Hands on the wall,_ saying, _Stay very quiet._ Saying, _Now how fast can you come for me?_

He watched, stomach churning, as Malfoy sat in Harry’s office chair at the DMLE. Watched himself drop his trousers, climb onto Malfoy’s lap and get fucked, ever so slowly, back arched, head tipped back, elbows braced back against the surface of the table. It looked nothing like his real work desk, looked far more like Malfoy’s parchment-covered bureau. 

_Look at you,_ this Malfoy said, using the fisted leverage he had on Harry’s shirt to drive him down harder, to pump up harder. _Would you just look at you._

After that one, Harry took another shower. He was spent and frazzled and over-sensitized, still got hard at the memory of that last fantasy, flushed hot with embarrassment at the sight of himself – puffy and red, twitching between his legs. In the foggy privacy of the bathroom, the water pressure hard on his back, he tried to walk himself through the whole of the 1987 – 1997 Nimbus line, and got as far as two brooms before the memory of Malfoy saying, _Hands on the table while I fuck you,_ derailed him and he wanked himself to a painful and quick climax – nearly sobbing as he came. 

“You okay?” is how Anthony wakes him up after lunch, this along with a nudge – with a cup of coffee at the ready. Harry accepts the offer, a shade too grateful. 

Anthony sits on the edge of his desk. Harry resolutely does not think about the desk. 

“You look like shit,” Anthony tells him.

“Yeah,” Harry says, breathing into the coffee. His glasses fog up. “Don’t feel too great.” 

Anthony is quiet for a short moment. “Maybe you’re coming down with something?” 

“Yeah,” Harry says. Sips. “Maybe.” 

*

In his second year as a Senior at MLE, Harry came to work with pneumonia – got sent home, did not go, still spent the day mulling about the office, coughing over paperwork and napping on the couch. In his fifth year at the department, he left St Mungo’s with a barely-healed gash cutting his midriff in half – all the way from his belly button to his ribs – to join in on final stakeout mission. 

Once, he’d lied to a Healer about the hex he’d been hit with just so that he could head back to round up an investigation – and ended up having to spend a completely unnecessary week at the hospital, bored out of his mind and getting blue goop pumped out of his bloodstream. 

Once, he’d slept at the office because he couldn’t be bothered to go home for the night. Once, Hermione stopped by his office before heading home and said, _Don’t overdo it, will you, darling?_

And Harry had waved her off, smiling, thinking – you can’t overdo something when it’s the only thing you want to do. Thinking that it would take a wall of blasting curses to slow him down. An army to get him to take a day off. 

In the end it’s nothing as dramatic as that, and all it takes is two sleepless nights and a couple dozen drug-induced fantasies to fully and completely crumble the fortress that is Harry Potter’s resolve. He shows up at work and his hands won’t work: papers fall from his fingers, pens, even his wand. He zones out of conversations, spends long lunches in the loo trying to get himself together – splashing his face with water, breathing deeply through his nose. 

His mind wanders and wanders and wanders and all he does is try to pull it back. Strap it in, quiet it down, shove it back into the cupboard. It seems, however, that the door – now that it’s creaked itself open, ever so slightly – is impossible to close. He thinks he might be running a fever. The feel of his clothes on his skin is too much, the brush of a person leaning over his shoulder – just to point out a sentence, to comment on something – too much. He snaps at Anthony when he pretend-punches Harry’s stomach, regrets snapping, then sulks for most of the day. 

He tries to read, can’t get through a sentence. He joins in on a training session, hoping to work out some energy, and leaves halfway through – flushed and angry, not wanting to be touched, wanting to be touched all the same. On Wednesday he spends a long hour staring at a wall, bleary-eyed, replaying the last fantasy the potion had shown him the night previous: Malfoy and him hiding behind the stands on the Quidditch field, trying to keep quiet because a practice game was taking place. Malfoy had unlaced the front of his trousers, was balls-deep down Harry’s throat. His fingers were twisted into Harry’s hair, and Harry’s knees were muddy on the ground, hands holding on to tufts of grass. His eyes teary. 

_Shh,_ Malfoy had told him, slowly – shallowly – pumping in and out. _Shhh._

It’s Thursday morning, just a few hours into the day, when he steps into Gawain’s office – hands sweaty deep in the pockets of his robes – and says, “I think I have to go home.” 

Gawain takes in the gravel of voice, his red-rimmed eyes – the gaunt pull of his face, the slight shake of his shoulders – and replies: “I think you should.” 

*

He’s halfway through the potion by Saturday evening. 

He sleeps and wanks the weekend away, curses the potion and decides to not touch it again – wraps it up in a cloth and stashes it deep in the pantry – only to itch and burn and go back for it not an hour later, hands clammy, fingers unsteady. He feels like a confused teen in a grown man’s body, as though a latent puberty has crashed its way into his life – fifteen or so years late for the party – and was now drunkenly stumbling about, unsure of what it wanted. 

Or, well. Not _that_ unsure. Not that unsure at all. 

On Sunday he inspects what’s left of the liquid, holding the brown glass up against a light. He palms it, lets it grow warm in his hand, then strides over to the kitchen sink – pours it out before he can change his mind. He feels better immediately: relieved, done with it, mindful of the fact he needs to be at work the next day. He cleans the mess that he’s made of his house, cleans the half-eaten dinners and empty packages of biscuits. He sends the clothes he’s been living in over the weekend for a wash, showers without touching himself, brushes his teeth, goes to bed at a reasonable time. He does a crossword off the back of a paper before turning off the light, before settling in, before spending the next two hours staring up at the ceiling in the dark – unable to fall asleep. 

He closes his eyes and sees Malfoy, buttoned-up tight in his doublet, sitting in an armchair with just his fly down. Sees himself sitting astride, naked, hands bound behind his back, riding Malfoy’s cock. 

And so he keeps his eyes open. Heart beating fast and high in his throat, in the dark of his room, running through Quidditch formations in a quiet loop. Eventually that, too, fails to keep the thoughts at bay and he ends up rutting into the mattress, keeping his hands twisted in the sheets and imagining the ghost of Malfoy behind him leaning close, settling over him, saying, _Well, would you look at you._

A few good swigs of Dreamless Sleep knock him out at two in the morning.

He manages to get through Monday well enough. A new case comes in – vanished objects from shops in Diagon popping up along the Kentish countryside – and Anthony and him are teamed up with Ron and Shankar. Most of the day is spent being blown sideways in a very windy field, tracking down magical traces in between the weeds. They go out for a drink afterwards, just to warm up, and Shankar starts up one of his question games – _okay so if you had to pick one muggle profession_ – and the company is lovely and distracting enough that when Harry leaves for home he almost forgets. 

And when he does remember, a flash of a memory – of a fantasy – halting him as he walks through the front door, he brushes it off. He tells himself he’s indulged. Tells himself he had a momentary obsession, tells himself that he was curious, has answered his own questions, and now he knows – and needs not investigate it any further. He tells himself, _enough, now._

As per usual, on Monday he has dinner with Kreacher. He makes a grocery list for the coming week. He clears out the heaped soot from the fireplace, tries to figure out that day’s crossword – fails, crosses out the whole thing in frustration. He listens to the Wireless, naps a little on the couch, and still finds himself on his knees in the kitchen before the night is out – frantically rummaging through the bin, looking for the phial he’s thrown away. He finds it, tries to see if there’s any droplets left, holds it over his mouth to catch a trace. 

Nothing comes out. He throws it across the room and it bounces off the tile, skittering to a halt. 

He goes for the Polyjuice instead. Takes a dose, regrets it immediately. Changes his mind, spends a near half hour in the chair in the study – head in his hands – muttering, telling himself, _You’re better than this, you’re better than this._ But he is not, never has been. He remembers spending a long year staring at Malfoy’s name on a map. Remembers looking out for the shock of blond hair across the grounds as they made their way to Herbology. He remembers the heat of him, imagined or real, the few times they’ve stood close enough to touch. The few times they had touched. 

“I’m here for the Professor,” is what he tells the witch behind the desk, a little out of breath, still shaking the dust from his robes.

She glances up briefly, asks for his name. She doesn’t remember him. He tells her the same as last time, and then she seems to recall – mouth twisting, saying, _Still no appointment, Mr Smith._ In response, his agitation switches into a single-minded determination and he steps up to the desk, smile thin and sharp when he says,

“That’s all very well.” He reaches for his badge, flashing it cradled in the palm of his hand – a coin with a large red ‘M’ embedded in its centre. He adds, “I’m here on business,” pockets the coin again, nods at the corridor to his right. “Sixth door, was it?” 

The witch looks up at him, unmoving – holding herself. “Listen, I don’t want any trouble.”

“I’m not here for trouble,” Harry says. “I’m here for business.”

She answers as he’s already walking away, calling after him that, “He’s with a client!” and Harry acknowledges as much with a small, two-fingered gesture indicating that he’s heard – that he doesn’t care. He knocks on the door and waits for an answer. No answer comes, and so he knocks again, continuous and repetitive until – a good minute later – the door opens with with a great whoosh and good deal of annoyance. Malfoy’s on the other end of the Port-A-Door, a little blurry through the pane of magic, soft-edged like in a dream. Like in a fantasy. 

He’s halfway into a sentence, something like – _for the love of Circe what could possibly be_ — but halts when he sees Harry in his Polyjuice, one hand up on the doorpost, menacing. His Auror stance. 

Harry doesn’t wait for an invitation, walks right in. The effect of the barrier is dizzying, fueling him further. There’s a small witch sitting at his desk, a bag clutched close to her chest. She seems startled by the intrusion, shaky because of it. 

“I need to talk to you,” Harry tells Malfoy, scanning the room as he would if he was on an official mission. It’s a habit. He doesn’t know what else to do. 

“ _Smith_ ,” is Malfoy’s reply. He sounds angry. “I am with a client, you are being exceedingly rude, and I kindly request you—“ 

“It can’t wait.” Harry glances over to Malfoy, who’s still by the door – holding it open, waiting for Harry to walk right back out. He’s in a different doublet, today. This one’s midnight blue and seems to have twice as many buttons as the last one. His eyes are startlingly bright. 

The witch at the desk gathers her things, makes to get up, and Malfoy holds out a hand, barks, “No! Please. Smith here needs to leave, not you, he has absolutely no right—“

“Auror business,” Harry interrupts, flashes his coin again. “Thank you,” he says, flat, when the witch falters at that – hurries to leave. Malfoy doesn’t halt her, then, glancing wearily at the coin himself. He does, however, briefly stop her at the doorway, apologises quietly, asks her to come another day, if she could, and sorry, and she just nods distractedly – pulling away, one leg out the door. 

“Wonderful,” Malfoy says when she’s gone. “Precisely how I wanted my Monday to go.” 

Harry looks at him. His scar pulls, dips at his cheek. There’s a slight tremor to it. Harry notices the rise and fall of his chest, how it strains against the brocade fabric of his doublet. The cuffs of his shirt are cut with the same frill as the collar. He’s quite real, suddenly. Quite unlike the vague memory that’s been haunting Harry for a week – that’s been sucking him off, bending him backwards over desks. Fucking him. 

Harry’s magic thrums under his skin. The Polyjuice roils, short-lived, has started wearing off. 

“Well?” Malfoy asks when Harry doesn’t respond. “What’s so important? What’s so incredibly vital you had to march in with all the grace of a bull and chase off a client, quite possibly forever?”

“Look, I—“ Harry licks his lips. His bones are rearranging, his skin stretching, shrinking. He grunts, stumbles, catches himself on the edge of the desk. “Wait,” he breathes, panting. “Wait, I just—” He tugs at his jumper, digging the nails of his other hand into the whorls of the wood. He knows the pain of Polyjuice wearing off, is familiar with it – knows to grit his teeth and breathe through it – but it’s never a lovely occasion, never easy, always just a second too long for it to be bearable. 

He’s sweaty and out of breath when he comes out of it. The world hasn’t come into focus yet – his glasses are still in his breast pocket. He takes them out with shaky hands, puts them on. Across the room Malfoy is watching him, his attention razor sharp. He hasn’t seen Harry in his own skin for a long time. They were children, last. Harry had been dressed in baggy things, handed down from Charlie. He’d been narrow-shouldered, still gaunt from his year on the run – his beard hadn’t come in full yet. He’d been a boy, really. Barely a man. 

“Well,” Malfoy says. “Would you look at you.” 

Harry looks down. He briefly closes his eyes, flushes down the back of his neck. Says, “I need another sample.” 

Malfoy is silent for a loaded moment. Then, “What happened to the one I gave you last week?” 

“Gave me? I bought it. Nothing happened to it. It’s not enough. The department needs another.”

“The department, or you?” 

Harry looks at him, nostrils flared. “Watch yourself.” 

“Oh my. Was I right?” He twitches an eyebrow, adjusts the length of his sleeve. “Barely a week, Potter, good _god._ What _have_ you been doing? Whatever it is you’re seeing, it must be quite f—”

“—I said _watch it,_ Malfoy, I won’t—”

“—Or what? It seems to me you’re quite at my disposal, suddenly.” He seems to be considering Harry for a moment, gaze dropping. Harry’s heart thuds heavily in his chest. 

“Yes,” Malfoy adds, softer. “Quite.”

“Did you—“ Harry swallows. “Tamper with it?” 

“Tamper with what?” 

“The potion. Did you – tamper with the, I don’t know, with—“ 

“How would I tamper with a formula I conceived myself? Potter, what do you—“ He cuts himself off. Makes a calculation, puts something together. Shifts gears. He asks, “What did you see?” 

“None of your business,” Harry says. He’s going through his pockets, searching for his Transfer-Coin. “How much was it? Thirty?” 

Malfoy doesn’t answer, is walking towards him while he fumbles, can’t find the right coin. “What did you see, Potter,” Malfoy repeats, sounding an edge off curious. Sounding suspicious. 

Harry finds the coin in the inner-lining of his robes. He holds it out, saying, “Thirty, no? I’m a customer, Malfoy. I have every right to—“ 

“What,” Malfoy enunciates, just a few steps away. “Did you see?” 

Harry stares at him, coin warming in his hand. Images that the last week has conjured are playing wildly through his mind, making it hard for him to think, to look at this Malfoy and see him for what he is – dangerous. Not a plaything. 

And as though to underline this fact, the next flash of a second comes with the white-hot whiplash of a legilimens trying to gain access unannounced. Harry throws him off quickly, occlumencing his thoughts shut, jerking his head away – adding a vocal, “Fuck _off,_ ” for emphasis. 

Malfoy is annoyed at this, turns sharper. “Sixty Galleons,” he announces in retaliation, stepping closer.

Harry grits his teeth, His eyes dance from the fireplace behind Malfoy, to the ceiling, to the door. “Whatever,” he says, and meets Malfoy’s gaze – trying for defiant. Trying to play it off like he knows what he’s doing. 

“No.” Malfoy comes closer still. Harry wants to back away but can’t, only presses himself further into the desk. Squares his shoulders. Steadies himself. 

“You just said sixty.” 

“I lied.” 

“Malfoy.” He means for it to come out with authority. It doesn’t. Malfoy’s near enough now that, were Harry to reach out, his hand would settle neatly over the dip of Malfoy’s chest, over the encasement of his doublet. The thought of doing as much flickers through his mind, followed hotly by a near-memory, by a different Malfoy telling him to keep from touching, to stay still, telling him—

_Hands on the table while I fuck you._

Malfoy shifts imperceptibly closer. He’s awfully tall, like this. Harry can feel the heat of him. Can smell the soap on him. Talcum. 

He says, “Tell me,” and Harry – running low on sleep, confused and aroused and altogether unfamiliar to this new world of desire – can’t quite keep himself in check. He wants, for a moment, simply _wants,_ knows not what to do with it, where to direct it, and the feeling bubbles like wild magic. He realises a fraction too late that no, not _like_ , but magic – staring at the spot where Malfoy’s scar disappears below the high collar of his shirt. The stiff hem of the doublet, buttoned shut over his Adam’s apple. 

With a small sound, the top button of the doublet pops open. Then the second, the third. 

Malfoy sucks in a breath. 

Harry clamps down on his magic, and the force it takes is like digging his heels in against the pull of a boar. His hands are tight fists at his sides, his heart a wild, mad thing – he can feel it everywhere. His fingers, his teeth. 

“Was it me?” Malfoy asks him, quiet. Dangerous. Then, “Did we fuck?”

Harry closes his eyes. He can’t think clearly. He wants to run. He wants to stay, wants to get out of his clothes. Wants to fall to his knees, to fight, to use his mouth.

“Ah,” Malfoy says, a single most terrible syllable. 

A soft chime sounds from what feels like miles away. A wavering moment passes, and Harry opens his eyes to see Malfoy staring back – eyes dark, weary – before taking a step back again. Clearing his throat. Putting a hand briefly over his midriff, then buttoning up the three buttons of his doublet. 

“Well,” he says. “That’ll be my next client, I’m afraid.” 

The ticking of the clock hanging over the fireplace suddenly sounds very loud in the silence between them. Harry swallows, and Malfoy’s scowl twists as he looks away – sideways, quickly at the door and back. 

“Of course you can’t leave like that,” he says, then, a roaming glance down Harry’s body. Harry feels it like a hot hand. He means that the Polyjuice has worn off. Harry knows this. 

Malfoy clears his throat once and shortly, says, “Come along, then,” crossing the room to the back, to the door hidden in the dark wooden panelling. The chime sounds again, and Harry glances toward the Port-A-Door as he follows Malfoy, opens his mouth to say something – ask something – and comes up short. 

The door in the panel opens to a softly lit corridor. There’s paintings on the wall, golden-framed canvases of overcast landscapes and stormy seas. There’s stairs leading down to a front door inlaid with coloured glass. Through the haze of it all Harry realises this must be Malfoy’s home. Something about that knowledge digs at him, uneasy. 

Harry doesn’t go through. He stands before Malfoy in the doorway, holding himself as though vying for a fight – were it not for the fact that his eyes keep dropping to Malfoy’s mouth. Were it not for the fact that he wavers on his feet, leaning closer despite himself. 

Malfoy watches him. It’s a vexed look, a suspicious one. When he speaks, it’s quieter again. A murmur. “I won’t be rid of you, will I?”

Harry doesn’t reply. The set of his jaw is answer enough. The casting down of his eyes – answer enough. 

“Very well, then. Wait, if you must.” 

Malfoy doesn’t look at him as he says this. Holds the door open further, waits for him to step through. Harry’s mind clouds over, the heat high on his cheeks. He moves as through a fog, walks into the corridor – turns to perhaps clarify, to ask, but Malfoy’s already closed the door behind him. The panel disappears into a tapestry. It depicts a silver-embroidered gentleman hunting for pheasants. 

The fabric is still unsettled, fluttering a little, and that’s the only indication of the disappearing room behind it. 

*

Most of the doors are locked. The first that Harry can open is a linen closet, the second a bedroom. Harry thinks it’s a guest bedroom, so neat and kept, the small desk in the corner unadorned – sheets on the bed pressed and folded down with military precision. There’s a low fire in the hearth, a leather chair off to the side, and not much more. The curtains are drawn, cream silk dotted with spades of ochre. Harry moves them aside with two fingers to peer out the window. 

He sees a narrow London street. Sees tall, white townhouses lit up in orange by a line of streetlights. It rains softly, pattering against the window. The pavement shines in the glow. 

_Wait, if you must,_ Malfoy had said. Harry drops the curtain, scratches over his brow. Grimaces, closes his eyes – scrubs his hand through his hair, grunts at himself, frustrated. He should leave. He could, easily enough – the front door is right down the stairs. He wouldn’t have to explain himself, not even face Malfoy on exiting. He could march himself and his reckless heart out into the rain and all the way back to Grimmauld Place, no questions asked. Have an evening tea, a shower, be in bed before midnight. 

He sits himself down at the desk with a sigh, takes off his glasses. Covers his eyes with the crook of his arm, stays like that for a moment, willing his breathing to slow – his heartbeat to settle. The fire crackles. The room is warm, a kindly space. Harry looks around, fingers the arm of his glasses. He puts them back on, opens one of the desk drawers, finds a stack of notes – numbers, a crowded script with arrows and question marks – closes it. Opens the one below it, finds a collection of cut-out _Prophet_ articles. He recognises most of them. There’s a few about the memorials held each May on Hogwarts grounds, many about the restoration efforts of the past years. One from the time Ron got caught up in a hostage situation at Gringotts – one from the time Hermione’s proposed educational law reform split the Cabinet in two. An older one, years ago, from when Neville had bred a cross-species of Gillyweed that, when powdered, could be used in potions treating lung-related ailments. His picture had ended up in the Prophet, all broad smiles while holding up a slippery batch of the weed. 

One, half folded away, from the time Harry made seniority and the department had gotten publicly accused of favouritism over the course of a half year.

Harry closes the drawer with a thump. He gets up off the chair, pushes it back into place, begins to pace the room. He does that for a minute or two, stops – frustrated with his own nerves. He plants himself heavily on the edge of the bed – leaning forward, face in his hands. His breath is close and hot in the hollow of his palms. Every muscle in his body is wound tight. 

What does he expect, he wonders distantly, and quickly shuts down whatever answer his mind supplies. 

“Conflicted?” is what Malfoy asks him on entering the room and Harry startles upright. His mouth goes dry. Malfoy doesn’t wait for an answer, advances on him quickly – all long legs in leather boots, laced high and tight over his calves. Everything about him – from the clasp of his buttons to the lacing, to the taut brocade across his shoulders – looks like an armour. Like he’s marching into battle. 

It happens very quickly, all of it. Malfoy in front of him and then over him, climbing onto the bed, knees on either side of Harry’s thighs, close and _warm_ and saying, “Tell me to stop.” 

Harry doesn’t. It’s been years since he’s let anyone this close. It’s been longer still since another’s body left him this wound up, this willing. A prickle of fear cuts through the headiness and for a wild moment he expects this desire to suddenly disappear. Expects that perhaps the fantasy was only sustainable as such, that he’ll clamp up and that his skin will throw up its alarms. Will send him running. 

Shaky, Harry makes to reach out – to put his hands to the casing of Malfoy’s chest for a semblance of control – and Malfoy stops him with a sharp, “ _Hands._ Behind you, keep them there. Don’t touch me.” 

Arousal tumbles through him ungainly. It turns his blood slow, his eyes unfocused. He puts his hands behind himself on the bed, leaning into the lock of his elbows. The sheets are soft under his fingers, cool. Malfoy sits himself on top of Harry’s thighs, pushes Harry’s jumper up to his stomach, immediately going for the button of his jeans. He undoes it – zips down the fly and makes little show of it, simply reaches into Harry’s pants and palms his cock.

Harry pants out a breathy _fuck!,_ bucks, tilts his head back a fraction – then looks back down as Malfoy shifts his arm to get a better grip, to wrap his hot fingers around Harry’s ruddy erection. From this angle Harry watches as Malfoy pulls at him, watches the stretch of his foreskin under his glans. Watches the dribble of precome over Malfoy’s knuckles. 

“Merlin,” Malfoy says when Harry’s cock twitches in his hold. Harry can feel the puff of his words. Malfoy looks down, his hair falling forward – brushing Harry’s jaw. “Did you get this hard waiting for me?”

And Harry, drunk and stupid, can only answer with a throaty, “Yeah.” 

Malfoy glances up at him from under his lashes. This close, Harry can barely focus on him. His eyes are fixed on Malfoy’s mouth, the plump wet of his bottom lip, when Malfoy tilts down – pouts, lets a line of spit drip from his mouth to the head of Harry’s cock. 

“Oh god,” is all Harry manages, before Malfoy uses his hand to slick the spit down and sets an instant and brutal pace. He puts his other hand to Harry’s shoulder for leverage and strips his cock fast, faster than Harry’s ever done himself, and Harry – who’s never quite been touched like this, who’s never quite been this aroused – chokes out a strangled _Ah!,_ a—

“Wait, _ah_ —! Wait, ah, _fuck,_ wait, I—!” 

And comes, messy and hard, all over Malfoy’s hand. All over the copper buttons of Malfoy’s doublet, over his own jumper. Malfoy strokes him through it, his breath coming in hot puffs on Harry’s chin, strokes until Harry’s twitching under his touch –hissing, spent and over-sensitive. 

Malfoy takes his hand from Harry’s cock. He looks at the mess Harry’s made, seems vaguely put off, and wipes it off on Harry’s chest. Harry’s elbows buckle, at that, and he half tumbles back.

“Well,” Malfoy says, leveraging himself off Harry’s lap. “That was fun.”

“Jesus,” Harry says, looking up at the ceiling. 

“Hmm,” is Malfoy’s answer, followed by the sound of him moving about the room. The wardrobe opening, closing. The shift of magic, something being summoned. Water being poured. 

It takes Harry a long minute to land back into himself. Another minute to lift up, tuck away his spent cock with thick fingers – fumbling with the zip. Malfoy has divested himself of the doublet, stands by the French dresser in his breeches – in his frill-hemmed shirt laced tight at his neck – washing his hands in a basin.

Harry slowly catches up to what has happened. “D’you—” he tries, but his voice is too rough. He clears his throat, speaks again, asking— “should I?” 

“Should you what?” Malfoy takes a cloth from a folded pile next to the basin, dries his hands. He turns to Harry, leaning sideways against the dresser. He looks like ease embodied, somehow – nothing out of place, his hair tucked neatly behind his ears again. A far cry from the heady mess that was Harry, writhing in his bed all but five minutes ago. Malfoy doesn’t seem aroused in the least. He seems bored. The line of his scar stands out pinkish against the pale skin of his cheek – the same colour as his lips. 

“Nothing,” Harry says, remembering – in a wild flash – how Malfoy’s spit felt dripping down his cock. 

Malfoy tosses the cloth into a basket. “You may take the Floo to the nearest station,” he says, walks to the armoire. Opens its doors. “Or you may take the front door. Both are options,” he states, takes a satin house robe from a hanger, shrugs into it. “I will leave it up to you to decide.” Closes the armoire doors, adjusts the collar of the robe. 

The sight of it unsettles something in Harry. Malfoy moves too fast, talks too fast, and Harry feels like he’s constantly five steps behind on every interaction – every conversation. It leaves him reeling, unbalanced, and in a wild move to bring things to a halt he says, “Do you remember the time in fifth year when we fought?” 

Malfoy, his long fingers on the collar of the robe, stills. His gaze flickers over Harry. “What time?” 

“On the field. Changing rooms. We flipped a coin for the pitch, you won. I got annoyed, pushed you in the—”

“Yes. How could I forget.” His gaze slips from Harry, as though tiring of the exchange. “I take it we’re done here?” 

“Malfoy, co—”

“The Floo powder is in the bowl by the fire, do use it modestly. Goodnight, Potter.” With that he walks across the room, out the door, robe fluttering behind him. 

Harry is left behind, clammy-handed. Buzzing. Under his clothes, his shirt is sticking to his skin with his sweat. There’s a smear of his come on his jumper, over his heart. He looks down at it, pulling at the fabric. 

Outside, the rain is still tapping away on the windows. 

*

Regulus’ old room looks out onto the street. It’s the kid’s room now, where Teddy stays over the holidays – where Rose sleeps when Harry’s called in to babysit. Harry sometimes wanders in on quiet days, on the weekend, lulls by the window with a coffee in hand and watches the small park between the lanes of houses. It has a single swing and a tree. Usually there’s a group of children mulling around it, roughhousing, shouting at each other. Some nights it’s teens who collect there, awkward in their braces, hunched in on themselves as they push and shove at each other – giggling, voices breaking. 

Today it’s Ms Holtzer’s daughter from down the street, making out with the new boy from two doors up. They’ve been at it for a while, up against the tree. 

Harry tries to remember Ginny and him. Tries to remember what he’d wanted, back then. What it felt like, making out with Ginny by the lake, him on his back – she over him, laughing into his mouth. He recalls the safety of her touch, how she smelled. The familiar weight of her. How she pulled away, softly, whenever he clamped up. 

Outside, Ms Holtzer’s daughter slips her hands into the pockets of the boy’s hoodie, pulls him closer. 

Harry sips his coffee. Turns, surveys the room. The comic books Teddy left behind on the bedside table.

He wonders at himself. Wonders if he’s changed. If somewhere along the line he’d turned into someone new and hadn’t noticed it himself. 

He wonders if he’d been like this all along. 

Kreacher comes up to ask him if he put milk twice on this week’s grocery list on purpose, or whether _this is master Potter’s idea of fun?_

Harry apologises. It was a mistake, he says. He’ll try to pay better attention next time. 

*

“This is not much to go on, Harry,” Dean says, swabbing the inside of the phial with a long-necked cotton bud. It comes away stained yellow. 

“I know,” Harry says, chewing on the nail of his thumb – sitting wide-legged on one of the lab’s wheely chairs. Dean drops the bud into a larger phial, fills it with silvery liquid from a squirting bottle – corks it. 

He glances at Harry while shaking it. His goggles are around his neck, today. “Anything you want to tell me about, Harry?” 

Harry shrugs, eyes trained on the phial. The potion strands are coming apart. Dean stops the shaking – holds up the bottle, inspects it. Several threads are bobbing about in the liquid. Glowing red ones, a few lighter ones – one bright silver. 

“Hm.” Dean pours them out onto a watch glass, twirls his wand between his fingers. Puts his goggles back on. 

“What is it?” Harry wheels closer, glancing between the threads curling in their bed of water and Deans face, pinched in concentration. He separates the red threads from the others. Runs a calculation spell over them. 

Harry bites at his nail bed again. “What are those?” 

“Unregistered strands,” Dean mumbles. “Oh boy,” he _tsk_ ’s, turning one glowing thread over and back again. “That’s a whole lot of aphrodisiac, buddy.” 

“Yeah? Is it—?” 

“Wow. Okay. That’s not quite legal, is it?” 

Harry edges closer still, heart hammering. “What is?” 

Dean clicks on a lens over his goggles, enlarging his eyes. He uncouples the silver thread, watches it twitch and move for a silent minute. “Harry,” he says at length, and it’s almost a question. “Why are there traces of your magic in this very dodgy potion?” 

Harry has a quick recollection of spitting into the potion. Of watching it fizz. 

His throat goes dry. “Is there anything—“ He licks his lips. “Mind-altering, in there? A—Something that changes your . . . will . . .” 

Dean nudges his goggles off with his wand. Sits up to look at Harry. “No,” he says, frowning. “The whole lab alarm would’ve gone off if there were. This is just—“ He gestures. “Strong. Juvenile. What’s going on? What is this? Should I be—?” 

“No. No, I’m – I’m working on it.” Harry takes a breath, considering a rack of pipettes on the wall. “So, not dangerous? Not . . .” 

“Harry.”

Harry looks at him. Dean is worried. It’s such a familiar look on him, and Harry thinks he shouldn’t have brought this to him at all.

“Do I report this?” Dean asks. 

“No.” Harry rolls his chair, clasps a sure hand to Dean’s knee – squeezes. “Thank you.” 

“Harry,” Dean says, and this time it’s a near warning. 

“It’s fine. I’m working on it. Don’t worry.” He lets go, wheels back. “You always worry.” 

“With good reason,” Dean grouses, and with one of his more impressive wand rolls, vanishes all evidence of the potion. 

*  
Anthony thinks for a long time on being asked. He leans against the backrest of the booth, takes a long drink of his beer, then says, 

“I guess . . .” He trails off. Swirls his drink to get it to foam again. The pub is loud, a crowded Friday night show-up. There’s a din over by the bar, people trying to get the two bartender’s attention, more people standing than sitting. There’s music, but it’s indecipherable. 

“I guess you know the way you know about anything. Like, are you hungry, yeah? You know when you’re hungry, right?” 

Harry lifts his beer and the coaster sticks to the bottom of his glass. He puts it on the table. “Sometimes I think I’m angry but turns out I’m hungry.” 

“Right,” Anthony says, nods. Sakes a sip of his beer, nods some more. “Well.”

“Did you know about Gita?” 

“That I was attracted to her? Oh yeah. D’you remember how we met?” 

Harry gives him a quick smile. “Remind me?” 

“Through her sister. She was mates with the guy I was housesitting for at the time, yeah? They came by one day to check up on the plants. Rang the door, I opened it, and – _pff._ ” He puffs out his cheeks. “Immediately. So fit. I was a goner, immediately.” He smiles, a little bashful, mutters a, “Still am,” into his drink. 

“What if it takes time,” Harry asks, a bass-filled moment later. “Like, what if . . . you don’t know, at first. And then you find out like . . . I don’t know. Like, you have a dream or something.” 

“Once,” Anthony says on the end of a sip. “Once, in fourth year, I had a dream about Luna and spent a solid week convinced I fancied her. I didn’t, to be clear.” 

“Right. Yeah.” Harry scratches the back of his head, stretching his shoulder – sucking in a breath. “Right.” 

“Does it matter, though?” Anthony has finished his drink. He’s glancing over his shoulder at the bar, to see if it’s worth it to push his way through the din for another round.

“Does what matter?” 

“How long it takes?” 

Harry doesn’t answer. Anthony goes to get them another round. They leave the bar shortly after midnight, Anthony apologising – saying he has to be at his mum’s early for Sabbath, that she’s already gonna be angry with him for Apparating in before sundown, that he can’t piss her off even more by showing up late. Harry waves off his lengthy explanation saying, _yeah, yeah, yeah_ – walking backwards down the street, saying, _See you on Monday!_

 _Monday!_ Anthony shouts back, pointing at him.

That night Harry falls asleep quickly, woozily, the evening’s drinks still in his system. He dreams of the day at the ministry. He dreams of when he found Malfoy in the patio, hunched over on a stone bench. In the dream, when he reaches out to touch Malfoy’s scar, Malfoy lets him. 

_Remember the time you fucked me on a desk,_ Harry asks him, hand sliding into his hair, pulling him close. 

_Yeah,_ Malfoy says, the word a breath against Harry’s lips. 

*

This time Harry doesn’t bother with a body costume. He goes in his own skin, marches through the moment the Floo connection settles, the moment he lands – in a flurry of ashes – in the long waiting room of a corridor. The witch behind the desk has just turned, is just about to put down a stack of papers, fumbles with and calls after Harry with an outraged, 

“ _Excuse—!_ ”

Harry flashes his badge, says, “Ministry,” and nothing else. He’s already at the door, knocking and not letting up. It doesn’t take long, this time. The chime comes, the light-bulb lights, and the door opens of its own accord – a soft click. 

Malfoy is at his desk, quill scratching away. He looks up and doesn’t seem surprised. “This again,” he says. Continues writing. “Delightful. What shall we do this time? Will you arrest me? Shout at me? Fuck me on the table?” He cocks his head at the paper, adds a mumbled, “Who knows.” 

He is entirely unaffected by his own words, blowing at the ink to dry it. Harry, on the other hand, pauses in his stride. It takes him a moment to process. To calm himself. He uses his wand to softly shut the door behind him, says, 

“Your potion isn’t registered, Malfoy.” 

“It isn’t?” He powders the parchment. Brushes it off, rolls up the sheet. “I do beg to differ.” 

“I had the lab look at it. At least five strands didn’t register on the system.”

“Well that’s not what I said, is it? I said the potion was registered. Never said a thing about the ingredients.” 

Harry huffs, incredulous. “If the potion was registered, it would’ve show—”

“Shown up on your system, yes. Well. I never said it was your system it was registered on.” Malfoy tucks the parchment into a tube, caps it. “This world has many loopholes, Potter.” 

Harry breathes through the anger that bubbles up at that. “Are you trying to get arrested, Malfoy?”

“Lord, no. Surely me trying would look a whole lot more impressive.” He places the bottled up parchment into a copper container on the side of his desk, closes it. It is whisked away with a small pop of suction. “Although I would’ve thought that bringing off a senior Auror would’ve bought me some—” He makes a minute gesture, a two-fingered wave. “Leniency.” 

Harry clenches his jaw. “You seem to think this is a joke.” 

“A joke? What a terribly unfunny one, if it was. No, no. Not a joke. Simply a tedious affair.” 

“What if it hadn’t been me? Hm?” Harry doesn’t holster his wand. He’s walking toward the desk, pulse fast at his wrists, saying, “What it if had been any other Auror – Anthony nearly took this as a case, you know, and then what? Are you really so foolish to think that—”

“Goldstein?” Malfoy asks, not focussing on the right piece of information. 

“Merlin, Malfoy, I should take you in for questioning right now.”

“Oh? And then what?”

“And then—” He’s standing by the edge of the table. Opposite, Malfoy is leaning back in his chair, hands clasped over his chest. His eyes are trained on Harry. He’s paying close attention. It’s a line of mother-of-pearl buttons, this time. A deep green doublet. 

Malfoy speaks when it’s clear that Harry won’t finish his sentence. “. . . And then? You’ll accuse me of . . . what, precisely?” The smile he quirks isn’t kind in the least.

Harry’s gaze turns hard. “Illegal potioneering.”

“Ah. But, old friend. What potions?” Malfoy unclasps his hands to gesture, all fingers, to the room around them. As Harry looks up, the lab table retracts into the wall. The cauldrons stack and store themselves, the chain loops up and disappears into the ceiling. The cabinets seem to turn inside out, coming up empty. Within a matter of seconds, the drawing room is only that: a somewhat empty room with a desk in its midst. Two armchairs by the fireplace. 

Harry’s grip tightens on his wand. He runs a quick spell, looking for traces, but Malfoy knows his vanishing magic. There’s no traces of the lab, magical or otherwise. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Harry says, his thumb hard on the ridge of his wand. “I’ve seen this place. I can prove I have, one Pensieve and they’ll—”

“And you’ll give up your memories just like that? Of your . . .”A strand of Malfoy’s hair escapes his ear. He flicks it away with a twitch of his head. “Visitations.” 

Always five steps behind. Reeling. 

Harry leans forward, menacing, knuckles on the table to support him. Something in Malfoy’s expression shifts at Harry’s movement, eyes flicking – minutely – over Harry’s face. 

“I’m trying,” Harry says, letting his words weigh, “to help.” 

“Yourself, you mean.” 

Harry’s fist on the table startles him, a muscle in his neck jumping. “Damnit, Malfoy. I’m—”

Malfoy tilts his chin up, proud, and tells him: “You’ve come for more.”

Harry looks at him. Straightens up, arms at his sides again. He should leave. He should’ve never come. He’s been going in circles for weeks now, ends up exactly here, each time. 

“You’ve seen something in your fantasies,” Malfoy continues. “And you think it’s real.” 

“You have this way . . .” Harry’s faint smile is involuntary. Self-deprecating. “Of talking. Like everything you say is truth. But it’s not.” 

Malfoy’s answering smile is flat, twitches around the edges. Like it’s an effort to keep it up. And when it falls, Harry’s distracted enough that he isn’t quite quick – doesn’t quite see it coming, the shot of legilimency reaching for his thoughts, the tendrils of seeking magic wrapping themselves into his mind. 

“Stay—!” Harry shoves him out, all blunt force, and on his way a memory escapes the blurry mess of shapes and images: a young Malfoy, smiling and leaning close, his shirt unbuttoned to his navel, his breath ghosting Harry’s lips. Harry doesn’t even remember where that one came from, what fantasy, what half-baked dream, but there it is – lingering right below the surface, blooming into full colour under the retreating fingertips of Malfoy’s magic.

“I would’ve told you,” Harry says, eventually. He’s short of breath. His heart is in throat, in his ears. “If you’d’ve asked me. If you’d’ve given me a second.” 

“I’m not that, Potter.” Malfoy’s expression has turned sharp. All playfulness is gone. “I’m not your – fantasies. I’m not—”

“You know what?” Harry says, lifting a hand in surrender. “I don’t need to know,” he turns toward the door, walks away. 

When Malfoy’s answering, “Don’t you?” comes, Harry’s almost at the door. He doesn’t pause, just glances over his shoulder, and Malfoy’s stood from his seat, looking – for a fraction of a second – uncertain. But then that’s gone, and all that’s left in its wake is a scowl and a strong posture. 

Harry stops. Shrugs out his arms, nods out his chin and says, “What?” 

Malfoy comes for him with the same war march as he’d had the last time. Harry takes a step back, two, raises his wand and Malfoy sees it – asks, 

“Will you hex me?” but gives Harry no time to answer, crowding in on him, and Harry’s wand hand comes down of his own accord, his back up against the door. They’re not touching, yet. With every breath Harry takes, his chest almost brushes Malfoy’s, and something about that catches Malfoy’s attention. His eyes are on Harry’s collar, then his neck. Then his mouth. Malfoy’s hair has come loose from behind his ears, is brushing the line of his jaw. 

He’s terrifyingly close. Harry wants him closer. 

There’s the clean scent of him, the way his room had smelled – when he’d been on top of Harry, barely a week ago – and the memory of that sloshes through Harry’s bloodstream. It had been mostly embarrassing, surely. He had barely lasted a few minutes, had only sat there and panted, and yet. 

And yet, Harry wants him – closer. 

“What will it be, then?” Malfoy asks. “What is it you’ve been dreaming of, hmm? You’ve had my hand. Is it my mouth?” He licks his lips. His eyes are still downcast, fixed on Harry’s mouth. His lashes are pale, silvery against his skin. “Have you been thinking about fucking me? Would you like to pretend it’s sixth year? Both of us in uniform, you following me around, me leading the way until we find an empty classroom to—”

“Stop.” Harry closes his eyes. He can feel the heat of Malfoy’s body through his clothes. He hasn’t yet begun to make sense of his own desire. 

“You said you’d tell me if I asked. If I gave you a second.” 

Harry opens his eyes again. 

Malfoy adds, softer, “It’s been a second.” 

Sinking to his knees is easier than he expected. His wand falls from his fingers. He swallows, his tongue thick and cottony in his mouth – looks up. Malfoy looks down at him through a veil of hair, eyes wide. Jaw a little slack. There’s no witty comeback this time, no comment, just a breath – a fast exhale – then a quiet, _Oh._

Malfoy’s long fingers reach out, brush over his cheekbone – a ghost of a touch – before sinking into his hair. He doesn’t pull, doesn’t push. Just puts the pads of his fingers to Harry’s scalp, as though unsure. Harry leans into it, then leans forward, easy as sin, fits his face to the dip on the side of Malfoy’s groin. His blood is a buzz in his ears, louder than anything in the room as he nuzzles Malfoy’s crotch – fits his lips over the shape of his cock through the fabric of his breeches. Over the laces.

Malfoy gasps, fingers tightening in Harry’s hair. Harry closes his eyes, shutting out everything but the single focus of his want, and turns his head a little –rubs his cheek over Malfoy’s bulge, now straining against the lacing of his flies. Does it again, and again, then presses a kiss to it. Opens his mouth, breathes hot over the base, fogging up his own glasses, and hears Malfoy’s breath catch in the distance. He kisses the bulging erection, rolls his tongue over the fabric. It’s rough, dry to the taste, and Malfoy bucks, falls – bracing himself on the door with his arms. 

Harry’s hands come up to steady himself against Malfoy’s thighs but he’s stopped by Malfoy’s hand in his hair, a sharp tug. 

Harry looks up. He has a hard time focussing, eyes heavy. Sluggish. 

“Sit back,” Malfoy tells him. His voice is low, twisted. 

Harry does as bid, sitting back on his heels. Malfoy’s hand slips from his hair. 

“Hands on your knees. Don’t—” His voice breaks, and he tries again, “Don’t touch yourself.” 

Harry breathes through his mouth. Licks his lips. Malfoy whispers a quiet _fuck_ , and pulls at the lacing of his flies. It takes a while to undo them, and even though Malfoy doesn’t fumble or tangle, his movements are slow – jerky. 

“Is this what you want?” Malfoy asks, pushing away the loose lacings of his breeches – reaching inside, taking out his cock. Harry’s mind is quiet, a buzz. He nods. He wants. He doesn’t remember ever wanting anything so singularly, so fully.

“Open your mouth,” Malfoy says, and when Harry does – when he slackens his jaw, when he looks up – Malfoy slides in. He’s hot and heavy on Harry’s tongue, staying still for a moment, and Harry lets him.

“Fuck,” Malfoy whispers. “Would you look at you.” 

Harry’s eyes flutter shut. His hands hold his knees in a vice grip, and Malfoy pumps into his mouth – shallow, steady, groaning as he goes. Harry curls his tongue around the weight of him, lips over his teeth, and sucks him deeper. Malfoy’s hips stutter, a hand finding grip in Harry’s hair again, and on the next thrust, Harry bobs his head to the movement. He can’t keep the suction on each give, each take, and his mouth is noisy – spit dripping down over his chin. His throat. 

“ _God._ Potter,” Malfoy grounds out, hand twitching in Harry’s hair. Harry looks up over his fogged-up glasses, over the rim, and Malfoy asks: “Can you be still for me?”

He can. 

He stills and remains still while Malfoy’s grip tightens, while he pumps into Harry’s mouth – fucks his face a few slow strokes and then a few fast ones, hitting the back of Harry’s throat with tight-mouthed little pants. When he comes he pulls back a little, and Harry chases him – muffling a groan – bobbing his head again, coaxing Malfoy’s orgasm from him. Swallowing it down. 

“ _Ah,_ ” Malfoy gasps, eases his cock from Harry’s mouth. Keeps it close to his lips for a second. And Harry lets the inside of his lower lip brush over the glans. 

Malfoy pulls away, levers himself off the door. Keeps one hand flat to the surface, catching his breath. He uses his other hand to tuck himself away, messily, and says, “Stand. Come—” He sounds wrecked. “Come up here.” 

Harry’s legs can barely carry him. The blood flow has been cut off, his head is woozy, all cotton balls, and he’s so hard the very drag of his jeans against the fabric of his pants almost has him coming. Once on his feet, he leans back against the door heavily, automatically presses his hands back against the surface. Keeps them there. His eyes are unfocused on Malfoy – who is so very close, now. 

His breath cools the spit on Harry’s chin. He has one hand over Harry’s shoulder, leaning on the door, and the other is now a ghosting touch – hovering over the indecent bulge of Harry’s erection, straining against his zip. Harry moans, tries to buck into it, but then the touch is gone. 

When Malfoy speaks next, it’s to the shell of Harry’s ear. “Can you come for me?” he asks, and teases his fingers to the damp spot where the head of Harry’s cock has been leaking through the denim. “Like this, Harry? Can you come like this for me?” 

Harry whines, rolls his hips again – looks for more – and again the touch is gone just as quick. “Just—!” he tries, but Malfoy holds him still with a hand to his hip. He says, 

“Think about what you’ve just done. How you sucked me.” The light touch is back, barely any pressure, and Harry licks his sore lips. Bites them. “Think about all the things you’ve been wanting to do. All your dirty fantasies, yeah, and just come. Can you do that, Harry?” Malfoy’s lips have dipped, now. They’re wet and hot to the jut of Harry’s jaw. “Can you come thinking about me? Can you co—?” 

Malfoy presses the flat of his palm over Harry’s twitching, aching cock, and Harry comes, Draco’s name on his lips – his body aflame, jaw slack and shaking, hands pressed flat against the wood of the door. This time, when the curious tendrils of Draco’s legilimency sweep in, it’s on a wave of an orgasm, blooming smoothly along the blurry haze of Harry’s arousal – the loose images filtering through his mind. Malfoy straddling him on the train. In the Quidditch changing rooms, in the empty classroom. In Harry’s office, Harry riding him, the hollow dream-words echoing in the space between them—

_Hands on the table while I fuck you._

Malfoy’s magic is gone before Harry can shut it down. He’s reeling, still too hot for his clothes, mind still a muddle. He lets his head fall back against the door with a thud. “Such’n asshole,” he says, voice deep with the angle of his throat. “You didn’t have’to . . . I told you, I’d tell you, if you’d just . . .” 

Malfoy settles in over him. Brings his chest flush to Harry’s, puts his thumb to Harry’s lips. Tilts him down. Presses their foreheads together. “I can’t—” he starts. Stops. Swallows. “I’m not your fantasies. I can’t be your—”

“I don’t care,” Harry says, and Draco’s thumb slips to the corner of his mouth. His nose brushes Harry’s and he dips closer, as though for a kiss – hesitates – then leans in all the same. Captures Harry’s upper lip between his. The press of it is light, questioning. The lightness roils at the pit of Harry’s stomach – makes him shiver. Makes him want to dive in head-first. He opens into the kiss, slides their tongues together. 

And for all that they’ve done, for all of the ways they’ve collided – as children, as teens, as long ago as a few minutes with Harry’s mouth on Malfoy’s cock – this one, too, feels familiar: an intimacy that comes from spending years trying to decipher someone’s next move. Years staring at their mouths, wary of what they might say next.

Harry is still slow from his orgasm, still sorting through what has happened, but the wet heat of Malfoy’s kiss sends a new rush of desire through him. He muffles a breathy moan into it, and Malfoy’s hand comes to rest at the base of Harry’s throat. Malfoy licks into his mouth like he’s hedging his bets, pacing the both of them– calm waters with a storm brewing beneath. It makes Harry want to unsettle him, chase that careless edge – see Malfoy pushed to action without thought, without his constant consideration, the loud ticking clockwork of his mind. Harry arches up into the kiss, tilts his head to deepen it, moans at the slick sound of it, at the feel of Malfoy pushing closer, pushing Harry into the door. He’s a solid weight, the row of buttons pressing into Harry’s chest a distant discomfort. 

Harry lifts a hand to anchor himself, his fingers to the small strip of hot skin at Malfoy’s wrists – right by Harry’s head. His pulse belies the calm drag of his lips. It’s a buzz under Harry’s touch, a bumblebee. 

When Malfoy speaks it’s still close, lips moving over Harry’s. “Trouble,” he says. “You’re always trouble.” 

*

Draco tells Harry to fix their drinks and then leaves with much ado, airily explaining in his babbling, clipped tones that he must close down the lab for the day, that he must notify reception, that he must—

The last of the sentence is trailed off, waved away, never finished as Draco exits the room. There’s a drinks cabinet by the mantelpiece, and Harry’s hands are shaky enough that the ice clatters in the glass when he holds it. He first pours himself a drink, a two-finger bottom, and downs it in one gulp. Pours another, drinks half of it in a neat sip, then the rest quickly. He makes a fist, clenches and unclenches it a few times to stop his fingers from trembling. 

“Stop it,” he whispers to himself, puts his hands to the surface of the cabinet. Closes his eyes, takes a breath. 

“Have you started without me?” 

“Hm?” Harry glances up, quickly, sees Draco closing the door shut behind him with a soft _click._

He pours two more drinks. The sheets on the bed are as pressed and as neat as they’d been last week. The curtains are still open, and the overcast day has turned into a clear-skied evening – the last of the sun filtering in low and pinked. 

“How long have you been living here?” Harry asks, just for something to say, picking up the two drinks – bringing them over to Draco. Draco accepts his, eyes trained on Harry, a singular focus.

“It was my mother’s. I inherited it.” He sips at the whiskey. “So five years, now.” 

The alcohol sits heavy and sour in Harry’s stomach. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Draco hmm’s, plucks Harry’s glass from his hand, puts both the drinks away on the mantelpiece. 

“Undress me,” he tells him. 

Harry swallows around the dry remains of the drink. His head swims. The line of mother-of-pearl buttons glints in yellows and greens in the warm light of the hour. Harry’s fingers slow and thick as he starts at the bottom. He fumbles with the thin-threaded loop keeping it in place. His nails are too short. It comes undone, eventually, and he moves on to the next. 

It’s quiet in the room. Nothing but the crackling of the fire, the far-away noises of the street below.

“How long?” Draco asks when he’s reached the button over his navel. The cotton of the shirt beneath is hot from being pressed close to his skin. 

Harry doesn’t look away from his work. “What?”

“How long have you wanted this?”

“I—” He pauses. Glances as far up as Draco’s throat then down again. “I don’t know.” 

“So the potion—”

“—I never thought about it much. Like this. I never really . . .” He licks his lips. “Wanted, before.” 

Draco’s chest moves under his fingers, breathing. “And now?” 

Harry undoes three buttons in quick succession. His hands at Draco’s collar, making work of the three clasps holding it together. Draco’s throat works, brushing against Harry’s knuckles. 

“And now, Potter?”

Harry eases the last clasp from its hook. The doublet hangs open, heat radiating from within.

“And now,” Harry says, a statement. He doesn’t realise he’s moved to put his hands over Draco’s sides – moved to push into that warmth – until he’s he’s stopped midway with a hard grip to his wrists. 

He looks up. 

Draco takes a step back, drops Harry’s hands.

“Do you remember,” he asks Harry, shrugging out the doublet, “the time we got into a fight outside of Transfiguration?” He tugs off the sleeves, holds the garment before him – shakes it out, folds it neatly. 

“Sixth year,” Harry says. “Yeah. I wanted to punch you.” 

Draco’s scar folds at the near-smile of his response. He walks to the armchair, drapes the doublet over the back of it.“Punch you. Touch you.” He looks at Harry, soft and terrible all at once. His shirt is creased from where it’s sat close to his skin. “I’d have taken anything at that point.”

“You can,” Harry says, quickly, all in a rush. He’s flushing, he knows. Can feel the ruddy blush of his cheeks. “Touch me.” 

Draco stands in a square of sunlight that cuts across his knees. His face is shadowed in contrast, like this, and Harry can only half make out his expression. Can sense the tension coming off him. “Yes,” he says, but instead rounds the armchair, sits down with a lifetime’s worth of cultivated ease. He is in the light fully, now, and the brightness of his hair is arresting. The wet pink of his lips – arresting. 

“Take this off,” he says, gesturing at Harry’s jumper, and crosses his legs.

Harry does as bid. He takes off his glasses, sets them next to his drink on the mantelpiece. Tugs his jumper up over his head, takes his shirt off along with it. His hair is a static mess, he knows, and he runs a hand through it – a nervous gesture. 

Draco watches him. He has this careful calmness about him, that near-bored expression he uses when vying for control – when trying to mask the machinery of thoughts ticking behind his eyes. Harry lets the inside-out bundle fall to the floor. His skin goose-bumps across his chest.

Draco’s nostrils flare. “On your knees,” he says. 

Harry goes, makes to shuffle closer – is stopped by Draco’s heel to his shoulder. “Unlace it,” he’s told, and Draco turns his shin, presenting his ankle, the long line of leather straps holding the boot in place. 

Harry puts a hand to the arch of Draco’s foot. Heat burns through him, a hungry thing, and he bends to press his lips to the gentle bump of Draco’s ankle. It’s met with a soft sound, a parting of lips. A breath. Harry tugs at the laces, pulling them from their eye, following the path of his fingers with his lips – his mouth. 

“Stop,” he’s told, soon enough, when he reaches the top of the boot – when he noses at the crease behind Draco’s knee. Draco sounds more breathless than before. Harry puts a hand to the crook of his leg, pulls off his boot. Carefully places his foot back on the floor. 

Draco shifts higher in the armchair. Offers Harry his other leg. 

“How do you do this,” Harry asks, his fingers a tangle in the straps – his cheek against the warm leather over Draco’s calf, “every evening?” 

“I’m nothing,” Draco says, sounding strained,“if not a man of patience.” His voice a pitch lower – Harry’s fingers under the hollow of his knee, pulling off the other boot. 

“Patience,” Harry repeats, vaguely amused – considering – just as Draco tells him to—

“Come here.” 

Harry’s amusement gets stuck in his throat. He goes, gut lurching. _I can’t be your fantasies,_ Draco had told him, but he sure looks the part, pupils blown as Harry clambers over him, straddles him, knees on either side of his thighs. His hands come up to hold Harry over his sides, and the cool touch of his fingers makes Harry’s heart thud heavily – makes him move into it before he settles over Draco’s lap. 

“Merlin,” Draco whispers, splaying his hands over the V of Harry’s hips, and Harry kisses him, knowing not what else to do with the wave of desire that crashes through him. Harry’s hold on the edge of the chair’s backrest is white-knuckled and he’s restless in his movements, Draco’s tongue sliding alongside his. Draco is a furnace below him, under him. 

Harry catches Draco’s bottom lip between his teeth, pulls. Draco grunts at this, opens into the kiss for a moment – making it filthy for a beat, head cocked – then pulls back with a moist sound. Rests his forehead to Harry’s. There’s line of spit between their mouths. He says, “Is this what you want?” Then, shifting – trying not to grind up against Harry, failing – “How you want it?” 

Harry nods, eyes so heavy they’re nearly shut. “Yeah,” he says, words brushed to Draco’s lips. “Yes.” 

Draco’s fingers dig into his skin and he cusses, softly, in what little space is left between them. In his fantasies, this part had been contained. They’d either get off clothed, or would already be undressed, and he’d stumble into them as though mid-run, already aroused and ready and well underway to getting fucked. In the reality of Draco’s room, however – under the reality of his touch, his shuddering breaths – time moves in an altogether different manner. There are distractions, small moments where Harry can only focus on the feel of Draco’s teeth on his neck, or the hum of the pipes in the wall while Draco kisses the hollow of his throat. There’s moments where everything speeds up, and he’s told to get up, to stand, to strip, and Harry isn’t sure how he does it – how he finds his footing or how he sheds his jeans, his pants. How he crawls back into Draco’s lap, how he doesn’t expire at the feel of Draco’s roaming hands up his chest, the way he says – pads of his thumbs to the bunched skin under Harry’s nipples –

“Look at you.” And, “I knew you’d be gorgeous.” 

Harry is naked, his erection flushed and leaking between them, and Draco is still fully dressed under him. The knowledge makes Harry flush, spurs him on, makes him grind down over Draco’s clad cock with a hunger that isn’t abating. Draco moans into his mouth, bites at the joint of his shoulder, tries to slow him with hard hands – but still whispers, “Look at how you want it. God. Look at how—”

“Will you fuck me?” Harry asks, a wet-lipped murmur to the shell of Draco’s ear. “I want – _please,_ I—” 

Draco asks him something that Harry doesn’t quite hear. His eyes are closed, hips snapping – seeking friction – and his mind is narrowed down to the spot where Draco’s hands rest, low on his back, right above the swell of his arse. Draco repeats the question, something about fingers, something about being ready, and Harry nods, half listening, his face buried in Draco’s hair. 

Magic washes over him, familiar and intimate, pulling him out of his daze with a gasp. He arches into it, jaw slack, saying, “What— _ah,_ ” because he’s slick, now. He’s slick and Draco’s fingers are edging down, slipping. No one’s ever done this to him. No one’s ever shared this magic with him, this odd inside out that’s almost like the seeking tendrils of legilimency but also not, much softer. Deeper, focussed only on him. His desire. 

“Yes,” he hisses, two of Draco’s fingers slipping in. Harry’s hands slip from the back of the chair down to the armrests – leveraging himself to rock onto Draco’s fingers. He does this once, twice, and then—

“Arms behind your back. Come on. Arms behind your—”

He moves as though through syrup, every gesture weighted, slow. He clasps his arms behind his back, and the same magic that had licked at his entrance – had stroked and opened him up – is now curling around his arms. Tightening, pinning them in place. 

“Lift,” Draco tells him, kisses his chin. Harry lifts, thighs shaking, knees slipping against the leather of the chair. His chest puffed out under the pull of his arms. Draco unlaces himself with a sense of care and decorum and Harry’s vision blurs around the edges. His hips hitch of their own accord, the weeping head of his cock catching on the soft cotton of Draco’s shirt. He gasps, a strangled sob of a sound, and Draco holds his own cock in hand – long and proud, rising from the tangle of his laces. 

“Down,” he grits out, and guides Harry, one wet hand to his hip – lowers him onto his cock. 

“ _Lord._ ” Draco bites out the word, tight, when Harry’s seated. Harry, for his part, can only breathe to the line of Draco’s jaw – his forehead to his cheekbone. He feels everything and it’s all too much: every motion, every shift of air against his skin. He’s burning up, he wants to move – wants to stay still forever. From this angle Draco’s scar is close, blurry, and Harry tilts his head, brushes his lips to the line of it. Mindless, he is, and doesn’t realise he’s mumbling to himself – a habit – not until Draco starts to move inside of him, starts to pump up a short inch in, out – not until Draco touches his nose to Harry’s cheek, until he asks,

“What are you . . .” His hands palming Harry’s ribs, holding him, fucking up, “What . . .?” 

Harry huffs – a sound that turns into a moan, pushing down against Draco’s upstroke, and he doesn’t explain, laughs a breathless laugh, recites, “Nimbus 400, grade 2 stabilisation charm, manufacturing year – _ah_ –1964.” 

He shifts his weight, grinds into the rhythm, and speaks over Draco’s strangled moaning, continuing with a short-of-breath— “Nimbus 450, anti- _ah!_ Anti-slip, _fuck,_ handle. Veers to right, comes with— _ah!_ With—”

“Fuck, what are you—” Draco’s hands come around, gripping Harry’s locked arms, “What—”

“I’m – I’m gonna come. I’m trying not to – Draco, I’m—” He can’t stop the grind of his hips, the seek for more, for harder, and he’s so on edge – so close, and Draco pulls him back by his arms, makes him arch his back. Something about the angle changes, Draco’s cock brushing a spot within him, and Harry goes slack-jawed. He can look down at Draco now, takes in his bitten mouth, his flushed face, his hair mussed where Harry has pressed close, nuzzled at it. The knot that ties the lace of his shirt at his throat jumps and moves with every thrust, with the rhythm of their fucking, and the sight of it – of Draco fully dressed, of how Harry’s cock has left a wet spot on Draco’s shirt – strikes him as the single most erotic peak of his life. In all his fantasies, in all his feverish, potion-fueled dreams, nothing had been like this. Nothing this urgent, this dirty and intimate, all at once. Vulnerable, Harry thinks, watching Draco watch him, reverent. Watching Draco’s eyes flicker from his face to his cock, to his chest, saying – as though he can’t help it, as though the words are speaking themselves into existence—

“Merlin you’re perfect.” 

Harry’s lets his head fall back, lets Draco hold his weight, fucks down and ruts up and now it’s Draco’s turn to babble, to put his mess of a mouth to Harry’s collar and tell him he’s beautiful, asking him if he wants to come, asking him if he wants to come on Draco’s cock, and Harry can only pant in response, let the build-up take over him, then fall apart with Draco’s lips to his neck telling him _that’s right, darling, that’s – yeah, come for me, come for me, come—_

And Harry does, his body straining – aching – then releasing, releasing, letting go. 

*

He’s on the bed. He only has a vague recollection of how he’d gotten there. A vague recollection of a washcloth being passed over him, his chest. He remembers laughing, embarrassed, asking in a broken voice if Draco often made a habit of washing his houseguests – remembers Draco responding with something sharp and mildly unkind. Remembers pulling him down into a kiss and then he remembers nothing more. 

He wonders whether he fell asleep like that. With Draco’s mouth on his. 

It’s darker, now. The firelight casts the room in long shadows that jump and dance with every crackle, every wave of the flames. Draco stands by the window, pulling the curtain to one side – looking out. He looks impossibly tall, framed like that. His face is soft for whatever he’s seeing out on the street, and in the dimness of the room he seems – for just a moment – much younger. Even his scar, half hidden in the shadow, looks like it might still pull – might still hurt. The familiarity of him tugs at Harry like an old ache. 

Draco spares him a look when Harry gets up, sits on the edge of the bed – taking a sheet with him, wrapping it haphazardly around his waist. 

“Ah,” Draco says. “He lives.” 

Harry hisses, briefly, at the pain of moving – at the dull burn inside. Draco makes a halting, cut-off gesture, as though he was about to rush over – then didn’t. Harry blushes for it. He’s careful, getting up, careful in walking to Draco. It’s fine. He is in no rush. 

Draco eyes him, curious. A little wary. 

“What are we looking at?” Harry asks, coming up next to him. Coming in close. 

“Nothing,” Draco says, sounding defensive. Harry peers over his shoulder, sees an empty street. Empty save for a black cat, sat couched on top of a bin, tail flicking – gaze intent on two pigeons picking crumbs from between the block paving. 

Draco drops the curtain. Turns to Harry – there’s nothing else for it. He’s combed his hair back into place, but has undone the knot of lacing at his throat. The shirt hangs open at the collar, ever so slightly, and Harry can see now how the scar runs down – over the skin of throat and further still, disappearing toward his shoulder. 

“Are you well?” he asks Harry, stiff. 

“I’m fine,” Harry says, and finds that desire still thrums low in his belly. Unthinking, he reaches out, wanting to put his fingers to the spot where Draco’s scar dips toward his jaw. Draco catches his wrist, seeker-fast. His eyes are dark on Harry. Focused. His grip is startling, a vice. His fingers are cold and his palm warm and he is _strong._

Harry’s breath catches in his throat. “Remember when—”

“Yes,” Draco says, and slowly, slowly, brings Harry’s hand to his chest. Places it over his breastbone, presses down. 

Harry can feel the scar tissue through the cotton. Draco moves his hand lower, and Harry feels every bump – every relief. Under the veil of his shirt, Draco Malfoy is a map of scars. 

“Is . . .” Harry starts, voiceless. Swallows, tries again: “Is it from . . .” 

“Yes. And _him_ ,” he says. Harry knows who he means. “And _her_. And—“ He stops himself, clamps his jaw shut. Harry had been there for the testimonies, had heard of the cruel hand of Lestrange. Had never quite thought as far as this, of what it might’ve left behind. 

Draco’s hand drops from where it holds Harry’s. He is warm, breathing, _alive_ under Harry’s touch. 

Harry fingers the fabric of the shirt. “Can I . . .” 

“What?”

“Touch you,” Harry finishes, voice thin. Unsteady. 

Draco’s muscles tense, jump. He says, “You _are_ touching me,” but then— “Yes.” 

Harry lets go of the sheet he’d been holding up one handed. He undoes the lacing of Draco’s shirt, heart heavy in his chest – beating fast, lust mixing in with memories, with history, with want. His knuckles brush over hot skin, and Draco’s breathing grows laboured under his touch. With the lacing eased, Harry takes each of Draco’s wrists in turn and pulls at the cuff-threads, opening up the sleeves. He then untucks the shirt from the hem of Draco’s breeches and pushes up, _up,_ making Draco lift his arms, lifting the shirt over his head – tossing it to the side. 

The scar that starts on Draco’s cheek stops, Harry finds, right above his nipple. It’s a neat line, a straight line, veering only a little at the end. The rest of the landscape of his chest, however, is nothing of the sort: a criss-cross of welts, of ridges, of blooming curse marks that expand like a network of roots. He has a few runes etched into his skin – at the centre of his breast-bone, under his ribs, low on his belly – and Harry has seen the kind before. Recognises them as healer signs.

 _For the pain,_ he realises. Over his Dark Mark, Draco’s had a collection of runes tattoo’d – seemingly on top of each other, in a blur of new and fading lines. 

Harry looks at him. Takes it in. 

“I told you,” Draco says. There’s a tremor in his voice. “I am not your fantasies. I am not—” 

Harry leans in, kisses the tail-end of the scar on his chest. Kisses below it, kisses the bunching of scar tissue at his collar, then kisses his nipple, and feels a sudden foolish rush of affection for the nub – kisses it again. 

Draco takes in a sharp breath, hand shooting up to Harry’s hair – clutching. Harry runs his lips over a mark, over a burn. Kisses a wet trace to the centre of Draco’s chest. 

“Harry,” Draco whispers his name, a plea, and Harry answers it with the touch of his skin, with a hot breath over Draco’s heart.

They end up fucking on the desk in the bedroom. Harry’s legs are tight around Draco’s hips, his hands back– as he’s told – _on the table._ Draco starts them hard and fast, banging the little desk against the wall with every thrust – biting his way up the flush of Harry’s chest – but slows them down toward the end, letting Harry wrap his arms around his neck – put his hands in Draco’s hair. He kisses into Harry’s mouth before coming, eyes shut tight, hips working, stuttering – stuttering. 

Later, after they’ve come down from it – after they’ve spent an indeterminable time kissing, slow and stupid with it – after Draco’d brought them food from the kitchens, after Harry had eaten a grape from his fingers, after they’d showered and slept and Draco’d awoken to find Harry wandering about the house – after Harry’d told him he’d never woken up at a lover’s home, and Draco had stumbled over the word _lover_ , had asked him in humour if that was what they are – lovers? – and Harry had said, _what else would you call us?_ – _Fools,_ Draco had answered, _Damn fools is what I’d call us_ – 

After that, after all that, in bed again, Draco’s mouth finds Harry’s scar. Finds the zig-zagging burst of lighting over his forehead, his brow. 

“I used to be so jealous of this,” he says, quiet. Light. 

Harry gives a weak huff of a laugh. Then asks, a moment later, “Are you still?”, and closes his eyes. Draco doesn’t answer. Kisses over the lid. Kisses the hill of his cheekbone.

“Do you remember,” Harry asks, “During the trials. The night I found you. When you—” 

“Yes,” Draco says. He’s warm all down Harry’s front. Harry can still feel the imprint of Draco’s fingers around his wrist, the strength of them. He says it again: “Yes.”


End file.
